







■H 

■mo 



THE 



VARIOUS WRITINGS 



OF 



CORNELIUS MATHEWS, 



EMBRACING 



THE MOTLEY BOOK, 
BEHEMOTH, 
THE POLITICIANS, 
POEMS ON MAN IN THE 
REPUBLIC, 



WAKONDAH, 

PUFFER HOPKINS, 

MISCELLANIES, 

SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS, 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT, 




COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 

MDCCCLXIII. 



?* 3 



• Mf 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, 

By HARPER & BROTHERS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District 

of New York. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



"he Author will not deny that he is glad of an opportunity to present the 
following Writings — the fruits, in part, of a five years' service in Literature — 
in a connected form. If he has wrought to any purpose, it will appear, he 
thinks, more clearly now that he is allowed to collect the scattered threads and 
show them, many-colored, in one woof together. That he has labored with 
heart and spirit, and with an eye at least upon the paths open to the American 
writer — will perhaps occur to the reader when he finds himself, at one moment 
nestling in the very bosom of smooth social life, and at the next hurried 
abroad through the wilderness to confront the Forest and out-talk the Cataract ; 
companioned with Prairie Winds and Spectres a thousand years old. If the 
author had brought no more than an obolus from each province into which he 
has penetrated, his revenues would be (one might say) a quite sufficient re- 
ward. Whether his own steps have been steady and well-chosen or not, he 
might hope that his foot-prints would not be entirely lost upon such as may 
journey forth on a similar adventure. 

Two courses lie open to the young author, one of which will secure to him 
repose, good-will, and the tranquillity of a sure, though not always a speedy, 
oblivion ; the other beset with doubt, clamorous with objection of all kinds, 
and crowned, it may be, with a triumphant end. He is offered the opportu- 
nity of going to school to Nature or to Books. There are innumerable Acade- 
mies, their doors wide-cast, where he will be welcomed and have promptly allot- 
ted to him a form in the class of Historical Novel-writing, Melo-D.amatic Ro- 
mance, Dutch Humor, or Sentimental Poetry. If he consents to take his place, 
quietly, under any one of the recognised Masters who preside over these depart- 
ments, all will go well with him. He shall possess his soul in peace, and en- 
joy the privileges of good and sober citizenship, undisturbed. Notwithstand- 
ing this tempting prospect, it will perhaps be as well for him, if his ear be at 
all quick at detecting the suggestions and promptings of Nature — to pursue a 
path of his own, and come to these honors in due course of time. He will 
find, in obedience to his own heart and a conscientious use of his faculties, 
a more genial pursuit and a kindlier reward than it is in the power of critical 
fashion to bestow. That there are peculiar bars raised against him, here, 



i v GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 

there cannot be a doubt. A reputation rises with us like the voice of one shout- 
ing for help from the midst of breakers and stormy seas. It stands, if it stand 
at all, a sea-tower that rocks at every heaving of the mighty element which it 
would fain master and over-awe. From a variety of causes (but chiefly one 
which will be found urged at sufficient length hereafter), a Good Name in Li- 
terature is the least stable of all things that take root in the human Mind in 
this vast Republican Confederacy. Beyond this nothing can be less clearly 
defined than the position which good men and bad men should occupy. They 
are as vague as the shadows of a dream, and interchange, mingle, and part as 
swiftly. In the great conflict of voices there are none to be heard above the 
tumult, saying who shall be master and who man. There is scarcely a jour- 
nal in America of sufficient authority in criticism to have its word taken as a 
warrant for the investment of a crown-piece. In this sceptreless anarchy the 
country swarms with Pretenders, Prophets, False Critics, False Men. 

Within the past five years the various causes tending to these results have 
attained a fearful head. The lustrum just past has been the saddest and most 
humiliating that has ever fallen upon any department of American Industry or 
Genius. The manna which many, of a too sanguine faith, looked for from 
Heaven, has fallen at last in a shower of moon-stones, with a copiousness and 
fierceness that have stunned the prophets and astounded the people. Hardy 
plants will they be indeed that can lift their heads from beneath entablatures 
on which their everlasting deadness is written by order of Law. But let no 
man despair for this. Let whoever can speak and write go on, in the stout 
heart and hopeful spirit, writing and uttering what Nature teaches. He will 
not, even in so great a din, be altogether unheard. There is something in the 
utterance of what she prompts, calm, clear, and true, that — whisper though it 
be — cuts its way through discords and clamors, like a clear, sharp note to the 
heart, where it dwells reproachfully, until it urges to a better and higher 
career. 

The problem of a Literature in America — what it shall be, in what forms 
and to what effect — is too well worth solving, too perplexing and glorious a 
riddle, to be passed by indifferently by any hand that has ever raised a pen. 
Many Moroccos and Arragons, with their boastful trains of followers, and 
false eyes, will ask the favor of the World, before the true Bassanio. Some 
will seek, like these, to win it in splendor, others to steal upon its affections 
with a milder beauty, and others again will ask it, in the plainest aspect and 
garb. Each one will perhaps demand the privilege of moralizing for a while — 
in a Preface, like the present Author — over his separate chest of supposed 
treasure in cunning glosses and self-deluding interpretations of the inscrip- 
tion it bears. Each one may advance his claim, and each in turn be rejected as 
a false and worthless suitor. The only claim the Author makes is that he has 
been no truer to the soil than the green tree : that is, that he has not shown 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. v 

himself entirely insensible to the silent influences of Time and Country among 
which he has grown to be an author at all. Whatever decision awaits these 
humble labors, he cannot but hope that a cheerful and fruitful hour is at hand. 
Literature, a patient youth, sits now on the verge of the horizon ; in silence 
and obscurity awaiting the summons to ascend the sky, and become a new dis 
penser of blessed light to the World. Would that it soon might have and an- 
swer such a call, and going up with a steady lustre to the zenith, assume there 
a post whence its clear bright front and planetary mail, shining at every point, 
might be discerned, with a new hope, by all true men in all quarters of the 
Earth ! 

New York, March 1st, 1843. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
General Introduction 5 

THE MOTLEY BOOK. 

Preface 12 

Noadiah Bott 12 

Potter's Field 17 

Greasy Peterson 19 

The Adventures of Sol. Clarion 21 

The Vision of Dr. Nicholas Grim 30 

The Melancholy Vagabond 34 

The Merry-makers, Exploit No. I , 36 

The Great Charter Contest in Gotham 42 

The Witch and the Deacon 46 

Dinner to the Hon. Abimelech Blower. ... 52 

The Druggist's Wife 57 

The First Anniversary of the N. A. Society 

for the Encouragement of Imposture. . 6l t 

The Merry-makers, Exploit No. II 67 

Disasters of Old Drudge 72 

The Unburied Bones 78 

Parson Huckins's First Appearance 80 

BEHEMOTH. 

Preface 91 

Parti 91 

II 105 

THE POLITICIANS. 

Preface 119 

Act I 120 

II 125 

III 130 

IV 137 

V 144 

POEMS ON MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 

I. The Child 153 

II. The Father 153 

III. The Teacher 154 

IV. The Citizen 154 

V. The Farmer 154 

VI. The Mechanic 155 

VII The Merchant 155 

VIII. The Soldier 156 

IX. The Statesman 156 

X. The Friend 156 

XL The Painter 157 

XII. The Sculptor 157 

XIII. The Journalist 157 

XIV. The Masses 158 

XV. The Reformer 158 

XVI. The Poor Man 159 

XVII. The Scholar 159 

XVIII. The Preacher 159 

XIX. The Poet 160 

WAKONDAH, the Master of Like ... 161 



Page. 
THE CAREER OF PUFFER HOPKINS. 
Preface 169 

Chapter I. The Platform 169 

II. First Acquaintance with Hobble- 
shank 172 

III. The Bottom Club 175 

IV. Mr. Fyler Close and his Custom- 

ers 177 

V. The Auction-Room 181 

VI. The Vision of the Coffin-ma- 
ker's 'Prentice 184 

VII. Puffer Hopkins receives an ap- 
pointment , 187 

VIII. Adventures of Puffer as a Scour- 
er 191 

IX. An Entertainment at Mr. Fish- 

blatt's 195 

X. Hobbleshank at his Lodgings. . 199 
XI. Leycraft rambles pleasantly 

about 201 

XII. A further Acquaintance with 

Fob the Tailor 203 

XIII. The Economy of Mr. Fyler 

Close and Ishmael Small 206 

XIV. Puffer Hopkins encounters Hob- 

bleshank again 209 

XV. Puffer Hopkins inquires after 

Hobbleshank 213 

XVI. The Nominating Convention 

hatch a Candidate 215 

XVII. Certain distinguished persons 
negotiate with the News- 
boys 219 

XVIII. Strange matter, perhaps not 

without a method 223 

XIX. The Pale Traveller enters the 

City 225 

XX. Fob and his Visiter from the 

country 227 

XXI. Ishmael Small makes a Dis- 
covery 229 

XXII. Mr. Fyler Close invokes the aid 

of Mr. Meagrim and the Law 232 

XXIII. Puffer Hopkins inquires again 

after Hobbleshank 235 

XXIV. The Charter Election 238 

XXV. The End of Leycraft 2 11 

XXVI. Hobbleshank's return 2 11 

XXVII. A notable scheme of Mr. Fyler 

Close's 216 

XXVIII. The Burning of Close's Row. .2 ID 
XXIX. The Round Rummers 1 Compli- 
mentary Ball 251 

XXX. Mr. Fishblatt's Newa-Boom...256 
XXXI. Puffer Hopkins improves an ac- 

quaintanee 259 

XXXII. The Death of Fob 269 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

XXXIII. Puffer is nominated to the Ame- 

rican Congress 266 

XXXIV. He Dines with the Magistrates 268 
XXXV. The Trial of Mr. Fyler Close. .271 

XXXVI. The Jury-Room 278 

XXXVII. Mr. Close's last Speculation. . .281 

XXXVIII. The Night Procession 284 

XXXIX. Hobbleshank and Puffer Hop- 
kins visit the Farm-House. . .288 

MISCELLANIES. 

The True Aims of Life 295 

New Ethics of Eating 301 

Jeduthan Hobbs 307 

The late Ben Smith, Loafer 309 

An Argument against Clothing 311 

Solomon Quigg 313 

The Ubiquitous Negro 314 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUs!^ 

Political Life 319 

Mr. James Grant 325 

The Solemn Vendue 327 

Citizenship 328 

Every Fourth Year 330 

The Field Death 334 

The School Fund 338 

The School Fund again 341 

Our Illustrious Predecessors 346 

The First Presidential Death 348 

A Movement in Clerkdom 350 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

A Speech on International Copyright 355 

An Appeal to American Authors and the 

American Press 358 

A Lecture on International Copyright 362 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

An author stands in the portal of a Third Edi- 
tion, like a prosperous host, smiling a welcome to 
the public. To have gratified the palate of the 
readers of former impressions gives him confidence 
in spreading his table again for another round of 
customers, and warrants him in the presumption 
of swinging out a new preface, like a new sign, to 
catch the eye, and inform those who read as they 
run, that there is entertainment within for man and 
woman. 

To leave metaphor for the plain level of histori- 
cal narrative, the author must express his deep 
sense of the flattering manner in which the Mot- 
ley Book has been heretofore regarded by the pub- 
lic. The kindness with which his earliest effort is 
received, seizes hold on the heart of the young au- 
thor, and can never be loosened thence or forgot- 
ten : it is then that enemies are hardest and friends 
most doubtful, when his hopes are at best question- 
able, and when to question his success or his 
powers is neither slander nor sacrilege. If the lit- 
tle light which he ventures to set up can be blown 
out, it accomplishes a double end ; proving the 
power of a malicious critic, and furnishing a clear- 
er firmament for such false orbs to twinkle in as he 
may be pleased to summon into existence. The 
present author must be considered, however, as 
speaking more for the sake of others who may be 
struggling than for himself, for he has the great 
satisfaction of adding, that praise has been bestow- 
ed by the critics of the Motley Book with an 
open and liberal hand. 

In the present edition, the author has amended 
the work, he believes, by substituting the sketch 
entitled "Noadiah Bott," in place of that which 
formerly opened the volume. 
New York, October 1, 1839 



NOADIAH BOTT; 

OR, 

ADVENTURES WITH A GOVERNOR AND 
A WIDOW. 

The two most delightful and exciting pursuits 
an ordinary citizen can be engaged in, in time 
of peace, are certainly office-seeking and court- 
ing a widow — combining as they do the excite- 
ment of bloodshed, and the more animating 
prospect of quiet and unobstructed plunder. 

In the year of our Lord , it fell to the 

portion of Noadiah Bott to embark in this double 
undertaking, with great advantages of mind and 
person . He was a little corpulent man, slightly 



asthmatic, and generally clad in garments aboui 
one size too small for his person, which of course 
gave him very much the appearance of a stuffed 
penguin promenading for exercise after dinner. 
Noadiah had derived his knowledge and expe- 
rience from several professions, for he had been 
in succession a hardware-merchant, a market- 
gardener, and a pawn-broker. During his con- 
tinuance in the first business he had learned a 
very singular fact in natural history, which gave 
him a strong prejudice against the traffic in 
andirons and table-knives — namely : that na- 
tive rats, particularly the species indigenous to 
New York, possessed tremendous powers of di- 
gestion; for he found they had discovered a 
passage into his money-drawer, and were in the 
habit of carrying off, and actually made way 
with quarter-dollars, half-dollars, sixpences, and 
sometimes were even so famished as to fasten 
on husky dry bank-bills, and counterfeit cop- 
pers and five-cent pieces. At least, this was the 
explanation given by an ingenious clerk, and so 
he broke up his establishment. 

Reserving a few spades, rakes, and coulters, 
from the general sale of his goods, he made his 
next experiment with a small garden in the su- 
burbs, from which he proposed to raise vege- 
tables for the supply of the city market. Never 
was such a season known as the one in which 
Noadiah Bott undertook the management of 
four acres of kitchen esculents. Tornados 
rushed down from the North and played y 
devil with his apple and plum-trees ; scorcfcfS 
dry zephyrs came sighing and stealing fro/™ 6 
South and wilted his asparagus and ca^?S®* 
What the tornadoes failed to blow away" ^ the 
freshets to wash away, was nothing b a nea P 
of dry sand, which would have beer ^ weU 
in the centre of the Arabian Des£ but ™ 
rather out of place in a kitcheiy , S\ j" 
actual cultivation. Then he hr* le "- nan ded 
mule, that kept turning the y /fl . g wa ^ l n ™ e 
furrow, and who made himse*! 'f?Practica ble 
and disagreeable that Bolt/* 1 * he m f ht as 
well introduce the hippo/ mUS aS a P lou ! h " 
horse at once, and sow h/ ar acr ff ™ th trade " 
winds and hurricanes. f f r sides "J , thl ?> e ™y 
thing noxious and p/* r ° u r s and destr «ctive 
was put down in the/ Ana ll < ? £°f th / S yean Fvrst 
came an army of lo/\ W r hlch took ? uarters 1 ™ 
the neighboring V ^ and / en <f > a * d after elec. 
trifvinc Bott for # mghts and a da y Wlth their 
ffit^ 1 ^ ™ d * an °™ et > aad ^ 



12 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



his garden so stripped of leaf, twig, and every 
green thing, that it looked like a ship with its 
sails tattered into ribands by a stiif nor'wester. 
Directly upon the track of this greedy swarm, 
came a mad dog, that one half the population of 
the city thought proper, for the sake of their own 
exercise, and the conservation of the public 
health, to hunt with great racket and outcry 
through Bott's garden into a neighboring pond, 
where the poor animal ended his troubles by 
committing suicide. Then there were ground- 
moles and midnight thieves, and the green- 
worm, and — the Lord knows what else. Poor 
Bott was almost distracted, and resolved to quit 
jiarket-gardening for life, and return to town 
with what small capital remained, and invest it 
in " dead stock," for as to vegetables, he said 
" he had no faith in 'em, either as a medicine 
or a means of living." 

Abandoning his lease and making up a wa- 
gon-load with old ploughshares, harness, hoes, 
rakes, and a second-hand bureau, he started for 
town, and with this miscellaneous stock of 
trumpery opened a pawn-broker's shop. He 
was now entirely out of his element, for he 
had been in the habit of carrying about under 
his jacket a little piece of curious mechanism 
which was infinitely more in his way in his pre- 
sent line of business than an idle partner, a bad 
season, or a dishonest clerk. What could poor 
Bott do ? Dilapidated old men, who had been 
in the revolutionary war, would come to his 
shop to pledge the very musket that had figured 
at Yorktown, and the very sword that had cut 
off the head of a Hessian at Trenton, and how 
could he refuse to add this to his collection of 
venerable relics, and just loan a few shillings to 
the poor old veteran ? And then the widow of a 
sailor that was with Decatur off iUgiers, hadn't 
seen a loaf of bread for the past fortnight, and 
all she asked was to be saved from starving by 
a small advance on a model man-of-war that 
her dear Jack had built when he was at home 
he last — last time. Every cloak that was left 
.pledge with him — every rusty beaver, every 
Ny's cap, and every pair of plated candle- 
stu s, had some little pathetic history connect - 
e v h it that would have gone to the heart of 
a . s So that, after being in business about 

nine m,^ Mr. Noadiah Bott had as pretty a 



collectic 



of good-for-nothing rubbish as an 



auctionet C(mld wigh tQ gtand oyer in the dog 

^ S '+ a\ "$> n ^ s sno P was a P er f ect limbo, 
haunted oy s ghogtg of cracked fiddles, feeble 
flutes, aisbaiu, earthen j and wine . bottles 
with holes int. bottoms> With ft few old 
wine-flasks, a c. ^^ [n a yial &nd twQ 
or three stout bt, ^ a tr&in of QUt _ of _ 
the-way utensils c* > ^ h Noadi _ 

iidaucuuui j| e re „ 10n f pawn-bro- 

kmg, into a more prom g £ 

He was, therefore, atj> prO p r ie t0 r 

^ s «^^ 

twelve and a half, in the s?^«^ 



meetings were held for the purpose of settling 
the politics of the ward. It was the business 
of Bott to light up this apartment once or twice 
a week ; to arrange the platform for a speaker ; 
and, on extraordinary occasions, to embellish it 
with a wooden eagle perched on a staff or a 
banner, stretched over an entire side of the 
room. Sometimes, in the absence of the regular 
speaker, Bott had been known to mount the 
platform himself, and puff away at a speech of 
considerable length and power. Besides these 
regular duties, he was expected to get an audi- 
ence together, and, if it fell short, to treat loaf- 
ers enough till the room was tolerably crowded ; 
to get up all extraordinary rounds of applause, 
and, finally, to preside over the crackers and 
beer which are frequently furnished to the de- 
mocracy at the close of an exciting and thirsty 
debate. It was a very entertaining spectacle to 
see Bott on a night of meeting, bustling up and 
down stairs, now at the bar and now at the ear 
of some leading politician, commenting on the 
news from Ohio or North Carolina, or discus- 
sing the effects of the new law regulating the 
size of pint -pots, on the habits of sailors, or 
some other abstruse and recondite topic. When 
the business of the meeting had commenced, 
you might see him every now and then rushing 
up from the bar-room, and thrusting his cor- 
pulent little body in at the mouth of the door, 
with considerable effort and puissance, as if to 
ascertain whether the audience were well 
packed or not. 

Bott had kept these quarters for several 
years. In that time he had grown stout and ru- 
bicund, and had formed a large circle of politi- 
cal acquaintance. By dint of listening at the 
key-holes, when committees and juntos were in 
session at his house, and by looking grave when- 
ever trifles were discussed, he at length attain- 
ed such importance in the political world as to 
venture to invite the Honorable the Corpora- 
tion of the city to visit, in a body, a remark- 
able tortoise that had been discovered in his 
yard, where it had lived twenty-three weeks 
under a stone, without a particle of food. They 
accordingly came, headed by his Honor the 
Mayor, and when there, Bott gravely asserted, 
before the assembled magistracy of the city, 
that this identical tortoise had been recently 
heard, at midnight, when not a soul nor a sound 
was stirring in the neighborhood, to cry " Bah !" 
very distinctly, which (Bott whispered to an 
Alderman, a particular friend of his) certainly 
portended the dissolution of the Union and the 
rise of bread-stuffs ! 

Strengthened by the popularity he deservedly 
acquired by this bold and sagacious movement, 
Bott determined to apply to the Governor for a 
small office. It was some time before he could 
fix upon one which was suited in all respects to 
his habits. He had a list of all the offices in the 
State, from Governor itself down to licensed 
master sweep, with the salaries or perquisites 
annexed ; and at length he concluded, to take 
the humble station of inspector of staves — twelve 



NOADIAH BOTT. 



13 



hunched a year. He was getting too corpulent, 
and this out-door business would bring him 
down. Besides, the sea-air would be good for 
his health, for he thought, and so he intended 
to represent to his Excellency, that drinking so 
much beer nightly for the good of the party, 
had somewhat impaired his constitution. In- 
spector of staves— that was the office ; and he 
must bustle about, bustle about — and move the 
very foundations of the island but he would 
have it. 

About this time it was that Bott cast an eye 
of affection upon a black-eyed little widow, 
whom he discovered one day by chance, sitting 
in an upper window over a coffin warehouse 
into which he had made his way to engage a 
coffin for one of his customers that had fallen 
down that morning in his bar-room with his 
glass in his hand. What was very singular 
about this case of sudden death was, that the 
man had infused a third more water in his 
brandy than he was in the habit of using ; so 
that it was a capital question for discussion, 
Avhether he had died of cold water or al- 
cohol. After chaffering awhile for the cheap- 
est coffin in the shop (for Bott buried his own 
customers, and liked to underbid himself), No- 
adiah set about sounding the proprietor as to 
the black-eyed lady up-stairs. He began by 
expressing a profound anxiety as to the health 
of the coffin-maker's family, and a deep convic- 
tion of the manifold benefits of living over the 
store. 

"His own people," the coffin-rnaker, how- 
ever, informed him, « lived in a different part 
of the city. His wife was a woman of weak 
nerves, and couldn't bear the sight of a coffin, 
it reminded her so much of her little Barte- 
inus who was dead and gone." 

"I haven't the pleasure, then," continued 
Bott, « of knowing the lady with black eyes, 
that lives above you. I wonder who she is ?" 
"Not know her!" exclaimed the coffin-ma 



ker, « not know the widow Bobbin— the gayest 
widow in this city ! Why, Mr. Bott, if I wasn't 
a married man with two small children, I'd 
soon know who's who, and what's what. 
I'm often surprised at myself that she hasn't 
driven me from this melancholy business of 
coffin-making, into ladies' hair-dressing, or 
French shoe-making, or some such light and 
cheerful occupation." 

This was enough for Bott. She was unmar- 
ried, and just such a gay, joyous soul as he 
needed to keep his spirits up in these gloomy 
times. He accordingly went home, buried the 
poor customer, and made up his mind to mar- 
ry the widow, and obtain the office of inspector 
Df staves forthwith. 

Bott, without difficulty, obtained an intro- 
luction, through his friend, the coffin-maker, 
o Mrs. Bobbin, the gay widow. He found her 
o be a sly creature, as full of fun as a .smill- 
•OX, and, in fact, a woman exactly after his ! 
•wn heart. It is true, she had one child— a! 
">y about thirteen. This was a slight objec- ! 



tion, but the widoAV prevailed upon Bott to re- 
move it by taking the boy under his own 
charge, and supplying him with food, lodging 
and clothes, with a few quarters' schooling; 
for the boy, as the widow cunningly insinuated, 
had a good deal of his mother in him, and it 
would be a pity to allow so much natural smart- 
ness to run to waste. Things advanced so swim- 
mingly, and Bott managed with so much skill, 
that, before a month was over, he had not only 
pledged himself to provide for the widow's son, 
(who, he had by this time discovered, enjoyed 
a tremendous appetite, wore his pantaloons at 
the rate of about a pair in a fortnight, and was a 
little fond of tippling,) but had also engaged the 
pleasure of the widow's company to the Cart- 
men's Fancy Ball, to be given in a short time. 
To make the matter still more pleasing, Bott 
had the satisfaction of meeting, at the house of 
the widow, an agreeable gentleman, whom he 
was delighted to be introduced to, by Mrs. 
Bobbin, as her "uncle Jonas, from Andro- 
scoggin." He seemed to have the same plea- 
sant turn as the widow herself, and was con- 
stantly employed, when Bott was present, in 
saying or doing some amusing thing or other. 
How could Noadiah be otherwise than happy, 
while the current ran so sparkling and clear > 
In the mean time, he devoted himself assi- 
duously to his application for the inspection of 
staves. He had a petition drawn up, setting 
forth his claims and services ; his three years' 
untiring opposition to the other party ; his ar- 
dent devotion to his duties as retailer of spirits 
to his political friends ; his zeal in gathering 
audiences and preparing inflammatory handl 
bills, and his declining health, occasioned by 
these extraordinary labors. With this in his 
hand, he scoured the city ; and, presenting it 



y . - — w..j , uuu, perming ii 

nrmly, ne brought every man to a stand as sum- 
marily as if it had been a pocket-pistol instead 
of a petition. His enthusiasm was considera- 
bly quickened when he learned that a competi- 
tor was out before hirn, and had a start of 
twenty-seven names. 

Besides signatures to his petition, Bott rush- 
ed hither and thither, obtaining letters recom- 
mendatory from every person of note or stand- 
ing who had the slightest claim of acquaint- 
ance^ with his Excellency, the Governor of 
the State. Among others, he procured an in- 
valuable and pressing epistle of recommenda- 
tion from a gentleman who had enjoyed the 
extreme felicity of beholding the skirts of his 
Excellency's coat, as he passed through Onon- 
daga county, during a violent storm. ~ 

The day had, at length, arrived, the even- 
ing of which was to be signalized by the cele- 
bration of the Cartmen's Fancy Ball; and Bott 
was hurrying through his political t< -ils, in or- 
der to be in good time to wait on the widow. 
With this view he was making rapid progress 
past a certain market on the East Riverside, 
when his eye caught a crowd. Now, b crowd 
was a perfect harvest to Bott, and lie had 
scarcely ever plunged into one without bring 



14 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



ing out one or two first-rate names to his pa- 1 
per. The widow would be impatient, he fear- 1 
ed ; and, though the temptation was great, he 
determined to hurry by, when he beheld a dis- 
tinguished functionary, whose name would be 
an all-important acquisition. He accordingly 
resolved to run the risk, and make up lost time 
by additional speed in his after-movements. 

" Your signature, if you please," cried Bott, 
pushing boldly through the crowd, toward the 
Coroner (for it was that officer, preparing to 
hold an inquest), whose ruddy countenance 
was a conspicuous beacon for the office-seeker. 
As Noadiah rushed forward, the crowd, sup- 
posing him to be some near relative of the de- 
ceased, come to take possession of his chattels 
and moveable funds, parted; and, just as he 
had succeeded in breaking the inner circle, the 
Coroner stepped aside, and Mr. Noadiah Bott 
found himself presenting his petition to an up- 
right corpse with a most doleful countenance, 
and a faded blue handkerchief about its neck. 

" Get his name, by all means, Bott," said 
the Coroner, whose office, after he had held it 
three months, had, somehow or other, made 
him remarkably facetious. " To him, Bott, to 
him ; he can say a good word for you in the 
next world, though he plays dummy in this." 

" The poor gentleman," cried a voice in the 
crowd, to several of whom Bott seemed known, 
"has been down drinking your health, Mr. 
Bott, in salt water, and success to your appli- 
cation." 

" Look in the defunct's pockets, Mr. Coro- 
ner," urged a second voice ; " p'r'aps he's got 
a petition up for surveyor-general of sharks and 
codfish." 

" More likely," said a third, " a special bill, 
for privilege to bathe in the docks below the 
lamp district." 

" No such thing," retorted the first citizen ; 
" I'll bet he's a quack-doctor, been in to try a 
new pill that he's been inventing to keep wa- 
ter out of the stomach." 

" Come, gentlemen," said the Coroner, " the 
corpse begins to look melancholy. We must 
have a jury on the poor fellow, whoever he is ; 
and Mr. Bott, you will make a good foreman, 
and I've no doubt, if you render a true verdict, 
provided the poor man can serve you by a good 
word with the devil, he'll do it with all his 
heart." 

Bott entreated his friend the Coroner to ex- 
cuse him from service. The Coroner disco- 
vered his extreme urgency — was inexorable, 
and the inquest proceeded. The body was 
laid at full length on the top of a fish-stall, and 
the jury took their seats on market-benches on 
each side. With a word or two from the Coro- 
ner, they proceeded to examine witnesses, as 
to the manner of death of the gentleman in the 
faded blue handkerchief. The first that was 
produced was an old fishmonger, who looked 
as dry and withered as a salted haddock : — 

" It was about two o'clock, he guessed, it 
mought be more, or it mought be less, for he 



recollected there was a little blast of cloud jist 
over the sun — when what should he see but 
the dead one there walking, melancholy-like, 
up and down the wharf (as true as he lived), 
with a piece of rope and the tail of a dried her- 
ring — (herrings was now a shilling the dozen ; 
if the season set in earlier, it mought so be 
they would be down to nine-pence ha'penny) 
— sticking, for all the world, out of his coat 
pocket behind. He guessed at once, and with- 
out help, the moment he got sight of the her- 
ring and the rope-end, that something was 
wrong with the poor gentleman's head. He's 
loose in the attic, thinks I ; but how he'll use 
that rope to any advantage, with this high 
wind, I can't guess. If he tries a spile, he's 
sure to be interrupted unpleasantly ; and if he 
goes into the market and gets possession of .*» 
hook, why, some butcher or other'll come nex 
morning, and be offended mightily at the liber 
ty he's took. ' What will the poor gentlemai 
do ?' says I, almost in convulsions to see hov 
he was put out, as he rambled up and dowi 
the wharf, looking one time on the ground 
and then gazing up at the mast-heads, ant 
then stopping, and taking a melancholy \ie\\ 
in a basket at some fresh black-fish, just oul 
of the water. This put him in a doleful train ; 
and what does he do next, but makes right 
down to the river, all of a sudden, and spoils 
his herring and rope's-end, and his own dear 
body, by jumping straight into the tide." 

An idle fellow, a sort of wharf vagabond, 
was next produced, to furnish his evidence as 
to the mode of death of the deceased. All that he 
could testify to was, that he differed from the 
first witness ; for that the herring and the rope, 
according to his best belief, were in different 
pockets : that the herring was in the right 
pocket, and the rope's-end in the left. This 
witness was followed by a match-spirit, ano- 
ther river loafer, who was " as sure as veal 
was dead calf, that the rope's-end was in the 
right pocket, and the bit of herring in the left." 
This brought out his predecessor, and a furious 
altercation sprang up between the two minute 
and accurate observers, as to the particular 
depository of the fish and cord. They battled 
it out for some time without interruption, 
when, being ordered off by the Coroner, they, 
in a very gentlemanly spirit, locked arms, and 
marched away together to a neighboring por- 
ter-house, there to discuss the question over a 
pot of pale ale, and, after an hour's enthusias- 
tic debate, to come to the conclusion that they 
were both right, and that " that old curmud- 
geon, the fishmonger, had parboiled (perjured) 
himself." 

Bott, all this time, was suffering under the 
most hideous state of feeling. Time was fly- 
ing ; the sun was down ; the widow must, by 
this, be dressed ; she had put on her hat ; in 
a rage she had torn out of the house, and gone 
to the ball alone ! This was the masterly pic- 
ture that Bott's mind painted for its own amuse- 
ment, while he sat at the head of the corpse. 



NOADIAH BOTT. 



15 



All tne customary evidence had been ex- 
amined, and a pretty palpable case of self- 
drowning was made out ; when who should 
rush forward, to increase his discomfiture, but 
half a dozen medical worthies, in breathless 
haste, panting, and covered with sweat. They 
all eagerly approached the body, felt its tem- 
ples, its wrists, and its ankles, with the most 
affectionate tenderness, and unanimously pro- 
nounced it — dead ! Here was a discovery for 
the Coroner and jury. The corpse was deci- 
ded to be a corpse ; but, as all their names 
could not appear in the next morning's report, 
the Coroner allowed a couple of them to un- 
button the jacket of the corpse, put their fin- 
gers in its mouth, and hand their names to 
his clerk. 

Bott was now allowed to escape, and, choos- 
ing the most direct route, started for home. 
He had successfully accomplished several 
blocks, when he heard a tremendous noise, re- 
sembling the approach of a furious army, the 
bursting of a volcano, or the thunder of a cata- 
ract ; it was a New York fire engine. With a 
horrible uproar, dragged forward by a hundred 
men, and with a tail of boys — black, white, 
and piebald — as long as that of a comet, it rush- 
ed on. It neared the place where Bott was 
hurrying along ; it approached a cross-walk 
that Bott must pass to the opposite side of the 
street. He undertook to achieve it before the 
engine came up ; but, mistaking his time, he 
was caught in the current and hurried along. 
He had got entangled in the rope at the head 
of the machine, and it was under such head- 
way that he must go with it, or be trodden un- 
der foot, and furnish a mournful casualty or 
melancholy accident for next day's papers. It 
was a dreadful situation for a gentleman of a 
rather corpulent habit, and slightly asthmatic ! 

He entreated the foreman to put his trum- 
pet to his mouth and stop the engine ; he offered 
him two shillings if he would do it— a new hat, 
his watch ! It was all in vain ; you might as well 
attempt to arrest the progress of a herd of buf- 
faloes on the prairie ; and they swept on — one 
long block, two, three. At length they came 
to a square, where there was a large heap of 
dirt; and chance accomplished what a new 
beaver hat, a watch, and the amazing sum of 
twenty-five cents, had failed to do — it arrested 
I the engine ; and Bott, with his hair almost on end 
with fear and anxiety, disengaged himself, and, 
retracing his steps at a hard gallop, reached 
his own door. 

Composing his spirits with one glass, he pro- 
ceeded to arrange his toilet in another ; and at 
last stood, in full trim, before the widow's door. 
With trembling hand he knocked, and was an- 
swered. She had gone to the ball an hour be- 
fore, with her uncle Jonas, from Androscoggin. 
" The devil take uncle Jonas ! (and heaven be 
thanked it's no worse !)" thought Noadiah ; 
and he speeded to the scene of festivity. 

Bott soon arrived at a large room, lighted 
with mould candles ; and from a box, in the 



centre of which, where a negro and five white 
men, like so many captive Troubadours of the 
feudal time, were imprisoned for the evening, 
proceeded certain instrumental sounds, of a 
very spirited and melodious character. On 
the floor thereof he discovered, besides the cus- 
tomary number of well-dressed ladies, about 
one hundred and fifty men, apparently in the 
enjoyment of robust health, and endued in 
cartmen's frocks, every soul of them. This 
was the Cartmen's Fancy Ball — the fancy of 
the thing lying entirely in the frocks. After 
he had somewhat recovered from the dazzling 
effect of the refulgent mould-candles, and the 
gorgeous apparel of the gentlemen, so that he 
could look about with tolerable composure, 
nearly the first object his eye fell upon, was — 
as true as Bott wore a ruffle ! — uncle Jonas, of 
Androscoggin, clad also in a cart-frock, and 
dancing away, at a very vigorous rate, with 
the widow. They appeared to be enjoying 
themselves charmingly ; and Noadiah thought 
he had never seen, in his whole life, a more 
affectionate uncle, or a more delightful niece. 
He, however, advanced into the centre of the 
room, where he was stared at by the frocked 
gentry as if he had been a Turk in a turban, 
or a Mohawk in his blanket, and accosted the 
worthy pair. 

The widow playfully rebuked him for his 
tardiness and irregularity, adding, with a sly 
look at her partner, that " uncle Jonas had 
been so kind as to drop in and wait upon her, 
in his absence, with the ticket he (Bott) had 
left." She added, in a whisper in Bott's ear 
— " Uncle Jonas is one of the best men living ; 
and, to tell you the truth, Bott, it's the remark- 
able resemblance between yourself and him, 
that made me take such a liking to you." 

At this, Bott laughed in his sleeve, and un- 
cle Jonas, who somehow or other had over- 
heard the substance of the whisper, roared 
right out. Bott glanced stealthily at uncle 
Jonas, very often, throughout the evening, and 
satisfied his own mind that he was one of the 
best looking men it had ever been his happi- 
ness to behold. 

The fancy ball proceeded merrily ; and eve- 
ry time the hundred and fifty male dancers 
jumped up and cut a pigeon's wing, or struck 
their heels in the air, they made a noise with 
their cart-frocks like the sails of a whole fleet 
of merchant-ships flapping in the wind. But 
what astonished Bott most, in the career of 
their proceedings, was, that although he was ex- 
tremely anxious to dance with the widow Bob- 
bin, yet, by some marvellous combination of cir- 
cumstances, he was deprived of that pleasure 
through the whole evening ; and what was, if 
possible, still more miraculous, uncle Jonas, 
by equal good luck, seemed to dance every in- 
dividual cotillon with that lady. Sometimes 
he was pleasantly requested by the widow to 
bring her a lemonade from the saloon; and 
before he could return, she was engaged, and 
dancing in high spirits with her respected re- 



in 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



lative. Then he would be courteously entreat- 
ed, by one of the managers, to snuff a chande- 
lier, as his frock was in the way, and he was 
afraid of a general conflagration if he attempt- 
ed it. Then a polite invitation would be sent 
down from the musicians' box, requesting Mr. 
Bott to come up the ladder, and give the or- 
chestra his opinion on the rumble of the drum, 
and to pronounce whether it wasn't a trifle too 
harsh for the ears of the very genteel compa- 
ny below. In this way the evening glided by, 
without giving Bott an opportunity to distin- 
guish himself on the floor ; till, just as the 
ball was about to break up, Mrs. Bobbin pre- 
vailed upon him to exhibit himself in a sailor's 
hornpipe, in which, she slyly informed the com- 
pany, he was a' 'most capital hand. A ring was 
accordingly formed by the rest of the assem- 
bled gentry, and Bott executed a hornpipe in 
most brilliant and comic style ; in fact, his per- 
formance was so pregnant with Iramorous mo- 
tions of the leg and swayings of the person, 
that, at the conclusion, a general compliment- 
ary laugh was raised for Bott's especial benefit. 

Upon the whole, Bott was pleased, and his 
pleasure was increased by uncle Jonas inform- 
ing him that he must go another way, and that 
he (Bott) must see the widow home. Bott rea- 
dily accepted the agreeable trust, innocently 
(and like the primeval Adam, before the days of 
omnibuses and licensed hacks) forgetting the 
coach-hire. A hack was therefore called, and No- 
adiah and the widow, bidding uncle Jonas good- 
night, mounted in — the widow giving Bott the 
back seat, and taking the forward one herself, 
remarking, that she preferred riding backwards, 
she had been in the habit of rowing so much 
on a pond, when a girl. During their progress 
through the streets, Bott observed that the wi- 
dow every now and then looked just over the 
top of his hat, and smiled ; but he didn't ob- 
serve that uncle Jonas was standing up behind 
the carriage, and making numerous pleasant 
signals and indications (now and then tapping 
his forehead significantly) to Mrs. Bobbin 
through the coach window. Having deposited 
the Avidow and discharged the hack, (for he 
preferred to walk home, and chew the cud of 
amorous fancy at leisure,) about three o'clock 
that morning Noadiah stretched himself to plea- 
sant dreams ! 

The inspection of staves now engrossed a 
large portion of the thoughts of the sagacious 
Bott, and he left no influence unasked, and no 
politician unannoyed, but that he would obtain 
the office. He was, by this time, in possession 
of the autographs of more than fifty important 
and respectable men, twenty tolerably great 
men, and twelve actually great men, that ex- 
pected to be members of Congress, before they 
yielded the ghost. To strengthen his claim, 
and bring himself more prominently before the 
party, he resolved to abandon the comparative- 
ly private theatre where he had heretofore per- 
formed, and exhibit on a larger stage — in a 
word, he determined to make a speech at Ma- 



sonic Hall, which bears the same relation to 
the political taverns of the wards, as a pri- 
mate's cathedral does to the little chapels con- 
nected with it. After forming this resolution, 
Noadiah strenuously devoted himself to the pe- 
rusal of the newspapers, and the orations of Pa- 
trick Henry, as given in the " American Speak- 
er," and to the practice and cultivation of his 
voice by a strict regimen of table-beer and lo- 
zenges. In accordance with his design he pre- 
pared an elaborate speech, beginning, " Fel- 
low-citizens, unaccustomed as I am to public 
assemblies" — and ending with an ecstatic de- 
scription of the "blood-stained Genius of Li- 
berty, wrapped in a winding-sheet of stripes 
and stars" — which was a tolerable figure, 
considering that Bott had no interest in an incor- 
porated cemetery, and was not a tailor by trade. 

The eventful evening having at length ar- 
rived, Bott disposed of an early tea, and ascend- 
ed to the public room up stairs, and locked him- 
self in with a tumbler of brandy-and-water, 
and a fourth-size tallow candle, having given 
strict orders to Master Bobbin to cry " fire !" if 
any one attempted to interrupt him. He then 
recited his harangue, from beginning to end, 
with great vigor addressing a group of large bar- 
rels that stood in a corner, as his " fellow-citi- 
zens," and a small barrel on his right hand, 
with "Old Rum" branded on it, as "Mr. 
Chairman." 

Master Bobbin (although, like a true son of 
New York, strongly disposed so to do) had no oc- 
casion to cry " fire," and if the non-interruption of 
Mr. Bott's speech was to be taken as evidence of 
no conflagration, any company might have ensur- 
ed all the property, as far as his voice could be 
heard, with perfect safety, and at a very trifling 
premium. Having gone through his speech to his 
own perfect satisfaction, and without any symp- 
toms of animation having manifested themselves 
either in the brandy-keg or the sturdy group of 
barrels, Mr. Bott descended, endued his stout 
little person in a rough over-coat with tremend- 
ous pearl buttons, and thrusting his manuscript 
speech in his hind-pocket, sallied forth. It was 
a clear, moon-light evening. Bott was in cap- 
ital spirits, and he dropped into a cellar and took 
a couple of dozen of York Bank oysters, just to 
strengthen his voice. He had not gone far, 
however, (reciting to himself favorite passages 
from his harangue,) when he was unconsciously 
followed by a slight youthful figure, which glided 
cautiously behind him, took a peep into his face, 
and extending its right arm, withdrew from the 
pocket of Bott a white roll which, in all human 
probability, contained the speech of the evening. 
The purloiner then stole off, and turning a cor- 
ner, halted a moment under a lamp, opened the 
roll, laughed quietly, and then made way for a 
political club or association of the opposite party 
to Bott's, and there finding a numerous assem- 
bly of choice spirits gathered, he regaled them 
with the recitation of the able and eloquent ha- 
rangue of Noadiah (or Noddy, as the reader 
took the liberty of calling him) Bott, Esq., 



POTTERS' FIELD. 



17 



which you may be sure was interrupted with 
frequent exclamations like these — " Well done, 
Bott !" " Good, for the inspector of staves !" 
"Equal to fifth-proof with five-fifths water !" 

In the mean time the hilarious and innocent 
Noadiah was wending joyously toward the scene 
of his glory, stopping now and then, however, 
when he was reminded by a hydrant, or some 
other upright and stationary object, of an atten- 
tive listener, to get into the shadow of the 
buildings and recite some striking passage with 
appropriate extension of arms, contracting of 
brows, and planting of the foot. 

An immense crowd had assembled ; the meet- 
ing was called to order ; a Chairman and seven- 
teen Assistant Chairmen (to help the presiding 
officer look grave) were appointed, and five or 
six speakers, ranging from three feet and a half 
to six feet high, and from twenty years of age 
to seventy, with every variety of voice, from the 
kettle-drum to the fife, addressed the audience 
— and Bott listened to them all, sometimes 
pleased that his own time had not arrived, and 
sometimes eager to take the platform at once. 

At length the cry of " Bott !" " Bott !" was 
heard rising from different quarters of the room, 
(for certain vagabond friends of his, there by 
his special invitation, were on the alert,) and 
swelling into a perfect tempest of acclamation, 
Bott came forward, aided in the rear by two or 
three sturdy scamps, and helped in the van by 
a couple of the secretaries, who seized him for- 
cibly by the collar and drew him forward. 

" Three cheers for Bott !" shouted one of his 
vagabond friends the moment his nose became 
visible as he assumed the stand. Three cheers 
were accordingly given, and Bott began. 
Through the first half-dozen sentences of his 
harangue he marched in triumphant style, keep- 
ing his eye fixed keenly on a bald-headed man 
in about the centre of the crowd, to steady his 
nerves — when suddenly the bald-headed man, 
prompted by a current of air that came in at a 
broken pane, clapped on his hat, and Bott stop- 
ped short as if he had been struck with the apo- 
plexy. " Go on !" was the universal cry. But 
Bott had lost his self-possession, and stared 
around like a frightened rabbit, first at the 
Chairman, then at each one of the seventeen 
Assistant Chairmen, then into the bottom of his 
hat, and then he thought of his manuscript. A 
smile gleamed over his face, and he thrust his 
hand belli nd him, found nothing, brought it 
back again, and the sickly smile went out. At 
last he stammered — " Beer three cents a glass — 
nutmeg extra — no trust in this shop" — and he 
was hurried off the stage by the two benevolent 
secretaries who had dragged him on by the 
collar. 

Recovering himself from the shock as well as 
he might, and making his way through the 
press as speedily a8 possible, he rushed into the 
open air and aimed at once for the widow's. 
There he was sure to find one respectful audi- 
tor ;it least, and ample consolation for the mis- 
carriage of his oratory. 
B 



To his utter and unqualified astonishment, he 
was there informed that the widow had gone 
out with her uncle an hour before, and wasn't 
expected back in a week ! What could this 
mean ? His mind was filled with dreadful 
forebodings — horrible surmises ! It could not 
be that they had left home to drown themselves 
together ? that they had gone out to fight a 
promiscuous duel because the widow had seen 
fit to show more partiality and affection for him 
than for her own uncle ? that they had ascend- 
ed the top of the shot-tower to study astronomy 
for a short time, and then to plunge for ever 
from its dizzy height ? Notwithstanding these 
conflicting conjectures, Noadiah went straight 
home, and immediately examined the Table of 
Consanguinity in the Bible, to ascertain whether 
uncle and niece were within marriageable de- 
gree. 

Next morning's paper explained the whole 
matter in the most artless manner. It was 
neither drowning, murder, nor aerial precipita- 
tion — but simply matrimony. The announce- 
ment set forth the parties as Jonas Tupp, cart- 
man, and Mrs. Amelia Bobbin, " both of this 
city." The relationship appeared to have been 
perfectly imaginary — a merely playful hypo- 
thesis. 

As to the inspection of staves, it was con- 
sidered so far beneath Bott's dignity and the 
worth of his services as to be given to one Zac- 
chias Bull, or Bullwinkle, or some such zoolo- 
gical fellow ; and Bott was informed by private 
letter that his application had been hotly op- 
posed by his very good friend, the Alderman 
who had tendered his invitation to the Common 
Council to visit a remarkable tortoise twenty- 
three weeks under a stone, &c, on the ground 
that said invitation (the most serious operation 
of Bott's life) was a deliberate imposition, as 
he was satisfied, on the understanding of the 
Honorable the Corporation ! 



POTTERS' FIELD. 

I stand upon the graves of the poor. Over 
this simple field, unvaried by mark or monu- 
ment, I cast my eye and feel the power and pre- 
sence of death more than in the tombs of kings, 
or standing beside those huge mausoleums, the 
pyramids. Here the grim phantom stalks na- 
ked ; not skulking as in the cemeteries of the 
rich and prosperous, behind funeral piles, or 
stealing away from the gaze amid masses of ear- 
ved marble. Every step of the tyrant falls 
clear and distinct upon the grave of some lowly 
son of earth and poverty. How many of the 
children of sorrow have tottered into this hum- 
ble burial-place, and thrown down the weary 
burden of grief and wretchedness under which 
they had fainted in the sun. 

All-accordant must he the trumpet-blast that 
can melt into one harmonious wch (if life these 
motley elements. What a pageant of wretch- 



18 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



edness, and rags, and penury would the habitants 
of this single acre form, could they be summon- 
ed from their rest. Moscow's bell should ring 
to raise the awful curtain, and bring upon the 
stage the parti-colored company. 

An archangel's peal alone could startle back 
into life, (from which their suffering was so deep 
and piercing,) the various multitude. An om- 
nipotent edict in truth it would require to force 
them once more upon a scene where anguish 
and tears were their only legacy, and the grave 
— the quiet, rent-free grave, their reversion ! 

Many as the citizens that people the bottom 
of the deep, are the myriads that have sunk si- 
lently as into an ocean billow, into the bosom 
of this green earth. I will try a simple spell 
of my own : perchance it may bring them up, 
at least in phantasy. 

" Re-appear, ye sad tenants of the narrow 
house, once more on the earth where ye suffered ! 
I here establish a court of death. Ye are sum- 
moned to the trial; answer ye to your names. 
Hear ye ! hear ye !" 

« Saul Rope ? Saul Rope ?" Slowly from the 
earth, near at my feet, a pale, shrunken being 
shakes off the green mould, and feebly aiding 
himself with his hand on his grave's side, steps 
into the twilight. 

His dress is an entire suit of gray, coarse 
linsey-woolsey, with a plain, cheap hat, without 
nap or buckle. " I was a saw-filer," said the 
poor apparition, " and kept a small shop in 
Doyer street. When I set up there I had a few 
friends at first, but they soon dropped off. The 
street was so crooked that nobody could find 
their way to me, even if they wanted my ser- 
vices; no one except an old bachelor with a 
twist in his neck, who seemed to have a natural 
facility in threading the windings of the alley, 
and who came not on business, but to enjoy my 
pleasant conversation ! Besides, a middle-aged 
lady, who was born in the street, and who had 
a praiseworthy fondness for her place of nativity, 
and who visited me annually the day before 
Christmas, to have her carving-knife put in or- 
der for the holydays. By-and-by the old lady 
died off — the bachelor bought a little farm and 
retired into the country, and I was forced to 
abandon my thankless trade of saw-filing and 
go upon the watch. Of a feeble frame, I soon 
caught a cold, fell into a galloping consumption, 
and you see me here. Thank God ! there was 
no wife nor little child to weep the day that the 
simple saw-filer died." 

The next dead defendant was a corpulent, 
hale fellow, who answered to the name of Ro- 
bert Drum, and was clad in tattered and ragged 
garments, without hat, shirt, or boots, whose 
story in brief was, that " he had been a beggar, 
and had died of good-living and repletion." 

After him Peter Packhorse and family were 
called. At first no one appeared, but on a re- 
petition of the summons, a small middle-aged 
man was seen making his way from a remote 
part of the field, with a sickly woman hanging 
on his right arm, and a train of twelve or thir- 



teen thinly clad, pale girls and boys following 
them. 

The tale of Peter's distresses was touching 
and pathetic. 

" Upon the banks of the sunny Bronx, in the 
sweet and cheerful village of White Plains," 
said Peter, " God cast my lot. I owned a few 
patrimonial acres, and in my early youth took 
to myself a buxom and bonny wife, and together 
we made a little Paradise of our farm, for every 
thing was abundant and in good order. The 
seasons were our friends, and the clear stream 
that ran by our door kept us close to our home 
by its cheerful voice and its ever delightful, rip- 
pling music. In summer I gathered in my har- 
vest, with my first-born boy and girl at play 
between the swathes and winrows, and when 
the autumn came, and the winter was provided 
for, I would take my gun or my angle in my 
hand, and strolling away into the rich crimson 
woods or along the mossy streams, meditate upon 
the bounties and blessings Heaven had given 
me in my fertile farm, my bonny wife, and my 
sweet-featured boy and girl. Thus three joy- 
ous years glided by, and prosperity made me a 
Christian in the open fields, and a devout wor- 
shipper in the church. On the last day of the 
winter of , a cousin of mine, a black- 
browed, thoughtful man, arrived in the mail 
coach from the city on a visit of friendship. 
He stayed little more than a week, but made so 
good use of his time, as to persuade me to sell 
my farm, turn it into cash, and, carrying my 
family with me, settle in New York, and become 
a broker — a sorry shaver of notes. The profits 
that he conjured up before me seemed so rapir 
and sure, the business so light, airy, and gentle- 
man-like, (who is it that has never been fired 
with the passion of becoming a gentleman !) 
that I fell in with his proposition, and early in 
spring, disposing of my farm and stock at ven- 
due, hastened to town. Here I soon lost the 
better half of my ready cash ; my dark-browed 
city cousin absconded with the balance, and I, 
with a family which had doubled, was upon the 
town. In a short time, even my darling chil 
dren (yes, the bright fairy boy and girl of my 
country days too !) were snatched from me by 
an envious fever, and I was alone with my wife 
in the vast city without bread. I obtained em- 
ployment, precarious and cheap employment it 
was, as a journeyman shoemaker : for every 
farmer in the parts where I was born knows 
something of the trade. Thus I sustained my- 
self for a few years, a new family of children 
having sprung up and died at my side in the 
mean time. My wife followed her thirteenth 
child, (a pretty, lovely girl !) My staff of life 
was broken. The trade at which I toiled bent 
me double, and in the ninth year after I had 
left that little Eden on the banks of the Bronx, 
a disease of the spine fastened upon me. I lay 
sick for months, in a low, vile shed, racked by 
intolerable pain of body, and worse anguish of 
mind, until I died and came here to lie with my 
wife and children in everlasting rest ! I would 



GREASY PETERSON. 



19 



that a river ran by our graves — something like 
the Bronx !" 

I could hardly refrain from tears at the reci- 
tal of Peter's simple story, but mastering my 
emotion, and turning my face toward another 
quarter of the field, I cited — 

" Paula Hops ?" — At this summons, a light 
female form, endued in a black bombazine gown, 
with a white vandyke about the neck, stepped 
.ut of her grave upon the earth, with something 
of natural grace in her gesture, and gave the 
following history of herself. 

"lama poor seamstress," said the fair vi- 
sion, a hectic glow shining through her pale 
cheek, and a doubtful brilliancy kindling her 
eye, " I was born to that vocation. My mother 
and grandmother before me were seamstresses, 
and lived in comfort and plenty ; but that was 
in different times from these. Tailors did not 
ride in carriages then, that poor girls might 
starve. 

" Their labor was at least worth the candle 
they burned far into the night to pursue it by ; 
but I do them wrong, they never burned the 
midnight lamp. Their hours were at the worst 
from sunrise to sunset. I toiled often from the 
first streak of morning till the neighboring 
clock tolled twelve at midnight, or one on the 
morning of the next day. And see ! this is my 
reward — these are the wages for which I 
wasted my young blood, health, and spirits, and 
finally my life !" and saying this, she took from 
her bosom and handed me a soiled and rumpled 
paper, containing the following particulars : 

" Seamstresses' Prices : — Six hours work 
on a common vest, six and a quarter cents. 
Twenty-four hours work on Baboon coats of 
kersey, fifty cents. Twelve hours work on Navy 
shirts with star-collars, twelve and a half cents. 
Two days work on blanket coats with fourteen 
buttons, fifty cents. Frocktees of duffle-cloth 
for stout-bodied men, twenty-four hours labor, 
thirty-seven and a half cents. Pantaloons with 
fly fronts and straps, eleven hours, twenty- five 
cents, &c." 

And leaving this guilty and barbarous cata- 
logue in my hands, the fair victim disappeared. 

Next, I called up in succession and heard the 
elegiac histories of poor Joe Crutch, an old 
pauper, with a red bandanna about his head ; 
Susan and Sarah Sparkels, a pair of spinster 
sisters, withered and sad, who came up arm-in- 
arm, as if they occupied a joint grave ; Sam 
Weatherly, a paralytic poultry-merchant ; Moll 
or Mary Jones, huckster ; two red-faced butch- 
ers that died of apoplexy within a day of each 
other (the old co-partnership), Bull and Bullock ; 
a pauper negro, Nick Johnson ; five or six sick- 
ly-looking, crook-backed wood-sawyers ; Quib- 
ble, a rusty attorney, with the dirty end of a 
declaration in covenant sticking out of his 
breeches' pocket, &c, &c. 

" Call into Court !" I exclaimed, in a voice 
of command, to a feeble old crier of the Com- 
mon Pleas, that had appeared (privilege of his 
former office) without summons to tell his tale 



of wo — " Call into Court ail those that have 
died of harsh usage and broken hearts !" and, 
feeble as was the voice of the tottering beadle, 
at his summons an innumerable company of hag- 
gard creatures started up and swarmed in every 
part of Potters' Field. A countless throng of 
faces was before me, men, women, and children 
— but all of them wearing a certain proof of 
the deep anguish that had cut to the heart and 
brought them to the grave. Who knew their 
malady, as they pined away day by day, like 
fruits that perish internally, and drop from the 
tree without seeming frost or blight ? None ! 
not one ! 

Some of them died off abruptly — others lin- 
gered along for months, and a few, to whom na- 
ture had furnished stout masculine hearts, 
weathered it for a year or two ; and then the 
undertaker (such a one as poverty could afford) 
was called in; the hearse stood at the door; 
the neighbors' children gathered wonderingly 
about the house and walk ; a few of the better- 
hearted neighbors dropped in; more of them 
looked out at their windows, or put their caps 
together and discussed the dead one's disease — 
some calling it pleurisy, and some, nearer the 
truth, an affection of the heart, but none, not 
one, (unless some single sister or shrewd aunt 
that lived with the poor family,) dreaming it 
was that terrible and crushing form of the dis- 
ease — a broken heart. Thus the poor-house 
train passes from the door ; the corpse in its 
plain pine-coffin is deposited in the grave ; and 
henceforth the dead is dead to all the earth ! 
There is nothing by which to remember the 
poor that are gone ! It is only over them as a 
multitude, whose combined sorrows and suffer- 
ings assume to the fancy a huge and dreadful 
aspect, that any one mourns. 

As individuals, while living, none cares for 
them but death ; — dead, none regards them but 
God! 



GREASY PETERSON. 

Smooth, unctuous, fish-faced being ! that sit- 
test duck-like, perched on the oil-barrel's edge, 
ready to make a plunge into the sea of business 
that roars at thy feet — Calmness personified, 
holy Peace, Placidity, and Quiet descended to 
earth in the guise of a green-grocer ! Gieasy 
Peterson, vulgar mortals have named thee, 
knowing not the true sweetness and blessedness 
of thy life in its even flow. Judged by thy gar- 
ments, thou art in truth a poor devil. A blue 
coat patched like the sky with spots of cloudy 
black, oil-spotted drab breeches, cased in coarse 
overalls of bagging, are not the vestments in 
which worldly greatness clothes itself, or 
worldly wisdom is willing to be seen walking 
streets and highways. True, thou hast a jolly 
person and goodly estate of flesh and Mood un- 
der such habiliments. Glide on, glide on. 
Oleaginous Robert— like a river of oil, and be 



20 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



thy taper of life quenched silently as pure sper- 
maceti ! 

Robert Peterson, Esq., green-grocer and tal- 
low-chandler, possessed the most incongruous 
face that ever adorned the head of mortal. 

His nose thrust itself out, a huge promontory 
of flesh, at whose base two pool-like eyes spar- 
kled small, clear, and twinkling, while a river 
of mouth ran athwart its extreme projection, 
flowing almost from ear to ear, with only a nar- 
row strip of ruddy cheek intervening. 

Within, greasy Bob possessed a mind as curi- 
ously assorted as his countenance. It was 
composed of fragments of every thing, bits of 
knowledge of one kind and another strangely 
stitched together, and forming an odd patch- 
work brain, whose operations it was a merry 
spectacle to observe. 

" Good morning, neighbor Peterson," said a 
small, snipe-nosed fruiterer from next door, 
" Good morning ! — I hope we shall have fine 
weather now the wind has shifted his tail to the 
Nor'- we st." 

" Hopes it may be so, Mr. Tart — the stars 
were precious clear last night, the sky was a 
healthy red this morning — and farmer Veal 
brought in his poultry to be ready for sale by 
noon. I hope the bank will give me a lift to 
day, for I didn't know but we should lose our 
little girl last night — with the measles ; she was 
sickly, very sickly. Perhaps peaches are cheap 
now ? aren't they, Mr. Tart ? How is the little 
widow, Mr. Tart ? I bought a firkin prime but- 
ter Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Tart, only one 
and six per pound. That dress of the young- 
parson's is horrid taste, bright buttons and rain- 
bow-colored neckerchief !" And so Mr. Peter- 
son would ramble on by the hour, touching on 
every imaginable subject, exhausting none, 
adorning all by a placid and inimitable face, and 
a peculiar, emphatic, jerking delivery. It is 
calculated by an acute and accurate neighbor 
ofhis,(a patent astronomical instrument -maker,) 
that in one day Greasy Peterson touched on one 
hundred and twenty-three distinct subjects with- 
out devoting more than two seconds and a quar- 
ter of remark to any one. 

There was a flavor of this same grotesque 
humor in every thing that he said or did. 

The store in which he carried on trade pre- 
sented the same parti-colored confusion and va- 
riety as his conversation. It was a congregation 
of an infinite diversity of wares and merchan- 
dises ; a piebald assemblage of boxes, candles, 
loaves, dried fish, fresh fish, green cabbage, red 
"oses in pots in the window, scales, antique 
hatchets, pyramidal and cone-shaped loaves of 
sugar in blue-paper caps, cinnamons and cloves 
in flaunting frocks of yellow, and Greasy Peter- 
son, presiding in the midst, mounted on keg or 
counter, like a Turkish Muezzin, in a rusty 
cocked beaver. 

The outside of this singular edifice answered 
aptly to the interior. Originally it was a low 
stone building, with a tile roof, occupied as a 
powder-house, with small square windows, pro- 



tected by iron gratings. About the twentieth 
year of the present century the tile roof had 
been shattered by a heavy thunder-clap, and for 
a time the little powder-house remained tenant- 
less, unless the landlord chose to collect his rent 
from a ghost in goggle eyes that was said to oc- 
cupy the premises. In the year twenty-five (7 
think it was) it fell into the hands of Mr. Pe- 
terson, who immediately set about converting it 
into a store and dwelling. The first step in this 
important undertaking was, to build upon the 
stone-work that had survived the storm, an up- 
per story and attic of wood ; and when this was 
completed, the innocent little powder-house 
looked very much like a stiff old maid that has 
weathered half a dozen changes of fashion, and 
chooses to wear an under-gown of the last cen- 
tury, topped with aboddice and head-dress of the 
newest gloss. 

Next, the windows were enlarged in length 
and breadth, the bars removed, and a noisy pair 
of shutters given to each. 

But the finishing-stroke remained. The fan- 
tastic tenement was yet to be painted, and here 
the riant humor of Mr. Robert Peterson broke 
away from rein and bridle, and fairly galloped 
off with all the plain sense of the worthy chan- 
dler. He entered into contracts with no less 
than six painters for the painting and ornament- 
ing of his new-fangled edifice, believing that no 
less a number could furnish a sufficient assort- 
ment of colors. And to each one of the six he 
gave special directions as to the compounding 
of novel and unheard-of varieties of tint. 

And now that Peterson's powder-house has 
left the brush of six painters, it shines upon the 
adjacent streets, a many-colored meteor ! rival- 
ling the sky itself in the brilliancy and variety 
of its tints. It is sunset imbodied in stone and 
wood, only with new and greater accessions of 
gorgeous hue. An enormous dot of paint, as it 
were, planted at the corner, saying, " Stop 
here !" A vasty exclamation-mark of red and 
blue and yellow, dashed down at the junction 
of the streets, demanding the wayfarer's pause, 
and the wagoner's mounted admiration. 

As in a hero everything is (or should be) he- 
roic, so, as I have before noted, every thing con- 
nected with the worthy green-grocer assumed 
some color of the humorous. 

The eleventh year from his opening store and 
establishing his family in the powder-house, 
Mr. Peterson, by dint of large profits and small 
expenditures, was able to set up a snug equi- 
page for family use. This was a light vehicle 
with a green leather cover, extending over the 
whole length, so that it resembled an airy mar- 
ket wagon, fixed upon high stout springs, and 
containing four seats within. Drawn by a sin- 
gle, sleek, shining nag of very moderate size and 
stature, the Peterson family were accustomed to 
visit certain kindred of theirs living at Pelham 
and West Farms. It was a rare sight to see 
them setting forth from the front-door of their 
gaudy dwelling : in front sat Greasy Peterson 
himself, smiling in a new sky-blue coat, with 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. CLARION. 



21 



oright buttons, tightly fastened up to his chin, 
light plush pantaloons, and an unctuous face 
and a pair of buckskin gloves ; the whole per- 
son surmounted by a glossy black beaver hat ; 
driving his way forward with considerable 
speed, by the aid of sundry encouraging chir- 
rups and admonitory, " Ge-ups," and " Get-a- 
longs." By the side of him was discovered the 
slim, upright form of Robert Peterson, jr., his 
eldest son, holding a black-handled coach- whip 
in his hand, with which he greeted, in the prog- 
ress of travel, innumerable vagrant curs, that 
hailed him open-mouthed at the doors by which 
they passed. On the seat immediately behind 
these two worthies sat Messrs. Eliphalet and 
Bildad Peterson, holding transverse across their 
breasts a child white and slim as if cast in a 
candle-mould, recently baptized Thalia, (soften- 
ed by the same monsters that christened her 
sire " Greasy,") into Tallow Peterson. On 
the next seat rearward were disposed two in- 
teresting children in calico frocks — Moses and 
Johnny Peterson, and supporting the uttermost 
rear reposed Mrs. Sophia Peterson, the corpu- 
lent spouse of Robert, and Sophia Peterson, jr., 
a girl with a large head and beautiful set of deli- 
cate small teeth. 

With this burden behind him, the little nag 
ambled on quietly and in good cheer, although 
the vehicle that he drew was elevated so high 
above him, that the tenants of the wagon and 
the sleek horse, seemed to belong to altogether 
different planets. Their return from these visits 
was still more grotesque, for their family-car- 
riage generally trundled into town garnished 
with baskets of fresh, sweet-scented apples, and 
a pair or two of tender poultry, presented by the 
kindly farmer friends whom they had visited, 
hanging at the sides, enlivened at times by a gay 
string of onions, or an ambitious head of cabbage. 

If I were called upon to name the prevailing 
characteristic of Mr. Peterson's mind, I should 
say, with deference to better judgments, it was 
a certain, practical, business shrewdness, that 
never allowed itself to slumber, or to be over- 
reached. Whenever trade was the subject, or 
bargain the object of conversation, all the inco- 
herence I have spoken of disappeared, and his 
mind flowed forth in a quiet, steady stream of 
plain good sense and useful knowledge. Those 
outward limbs and flourishes were instantly 
lopped off by the exacting knife of business and 
gain, and the simple, unadorned trunk of the 
matter stood disencumbered. Many are the 
prime bargains Peterson has entrapped unwary 
boatmen and butter-merchants into, by help of 
his rude garments and vagabond presentment. 

" How much do you ask a pound for these 
firkins, squire ?" asked Greasy Peterson one day, 
dressed in his roughest suit of clothes, and a hat 
with only half a rim. 

" Why, loafer," replied the captain of the 
loop, to whom this question was addressed in 

slouching, careless tone, "why uncle oily- 
reeches, I guess you may have it at six pence 
a pound the lot." 

2 



" I'll take it, sir !" said Greasy Peterson, 
throwing an air of considerable seriousness and 
dignity into his remark, which startled the rash 
butter-merchant slightly. 

" But mind ye, neighbor — it's cash down at 
that price ! Come, fork over the solid, Old 
Rags," said the boatman, with a loud laugh, 
and turning with a quizzical leer to a group of 
captains, and sloop-boys that had gathered to 
see the fun. 

" Here it is !" responded Peterson, coolly, 
taking out a dirty buckskin bag, and counting 
down in hard silver the sum to which the twenty- 
five firkins of butter amounted; ordered the 
whole upon a cart, and jumping on himself, 
touched his hat very politely, and bade the as- 
tounded crew of boatmen, " Good afternoon !" 

The rash captain lives to this day, and indul- 
ges in a curious half-laugh, when he is engaged 
in bargaining, that is known along the wharves 
as the famous Greasy Peterson chuckle. 

About the forty-third year of his age, the 
worthy grocer was visited by apoplexy which 
dried up his vital juices, and withered his person 
like an apple blown from the tree, nipped by 
autumn frosts. The physicians straightway 
hurried in, and bled him so freely, that the fresh 
gloss and old smoothness departed from his 
countenance, and left him a sorry spectacle 
compared with the former galliard and jovial 
creature that answered to his name. He how- 
ever recovered so far in a few weeks as to be 
able to hobble out towards noon, and plant him- 
self on a stool, on the sunny side of his store, 
to air his constitution, and receive the congratu- 
lations and good wishes of his friends and neigh- 
bors as they passed or paused awhile to inquire 
more minutely after his health. In a short 
time (despite his careful diet and the skilful 
practice of his physicians), a second and heavier 
stroke of the disease fell upon him and carried 
him off, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 
same day on which the celebrated fat ox, Billy 
Lambert, arrived in town. 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. 
CLARION. 

Gentle, charitable, benevolent reader! if 
thou feelest disposed to aid thine author in a 
sore perplexity, and to dispense unto him, out 
of the abundance of thy geographical erudition, 
permit him to address to thee (humbly confess- 
ing his manifold ignorance) a single inter- 
rogatory : Where is the city of Pet h / Many 
times have I journeyed along the highway, that 
runs through Greenwich, in the state (if Con- 
necticut, and heard some learned traveller that 
rode with me say, " Yonder is the city of IVth !'" 
pointing to the northeast : and looking thither, 
I have discovered nought but a common hill- 
side, with a single low tenement feebly sustain- 
ing itself amid a score of rocks, and three or 
four straggling apple-trees. 



22 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



Nevertheless m that illustrious city, wher- 
ever it be, the city of Peth, of whose inhabitants 
the country doggerel says — 

" Half ran away, and half starved to death," 

did the equally illustrious Solomon Clarion find 
a dwelling-place. 

Humanity never assumed a more joyous and 
gladsome form than thine, blithe Sol. Clarion ! 
Ah! why didst thou leave the tumbling hay- 
mow, and the fresh stream, to become a pilgrim 
to this Babel of ours ? Why didst thou aban- 
don the festal company of rustic youths and 
maidens, to mingle with the tide of dark or care- 
worn faces that flows through our streets ? 

In his earliest prime, young Clarion lost his 
mother (a golden woman — full of the delicacies 
and rich fruits that belong to her sex, dashed 
with something of a wilder savor), and was 
brought to yonder poor dwelling to be a house- 
mate with his mother's parents. 

Young Solomon's character soon developed 
itself, and proved to be of a mingled yarn. 
None was gayer at school or in the orchard at 
play than he : and yet, at times, none was sad- 
der or more thoughtful. 

Some holydays he passed in merry game and 
wild frolic with his little school companions, 
others he spent far away in the woods, or wan- 
dering through the green meadows, or loitering 
slowly by the babbling brook. It was Solomon 
Clarion (that fear-nought boy) that rode the 
wild colts, and ran at the heels of every mad 
bull that roared in the county ! It was Solo- 
mon Clarion that was caught in an attitude of 
breathless and reverential regard, watching the 
glorious sunset or the stars climbing the sky ! 

In front of his grandfather's dwelling, and by 
the road-side, stood a dry, dead old cherry-tree, 
which had been barren of fruitage for many 
years. It had been planted by a quaint old 
bachelor uncle, and was considered a precious 
family relic ; and as such, Sol. himself regard- 
ed it until one day, a clear April holyday, in a 
gamesome mood he doomed its overthrow. Ga- 
thering a noisy band of school-fellows, he issued 
his warrant against old uncle Cherry (the name 
by which it was known throughout the neigh- 
borhood), and, producing a coil of rope, ascend- 
ed the tree, and fixed a halter round its mos- 
sy old neck. At a signal the boys gave a hear- 
ty pull (none heartier than Clarion!) and, 
with a clamorous shout, it fell to the earth. In 
a moment or two Solomon was missing, and his 
comrades, after considerable search, discovered 
him over the fence, with tears in his eyes, sli- 
ding a fragment of the mouldering bark of old 
uncle Cherry thoughtfully into his pocket. So 
strange a creature was Clarion ! 

Sol's chosen friend and boon companion, was 
a simple fellow by the name of Will Robin — 
or Foolish Will, as he was better known, and 
whose general character, although brightened 
and improved by occasional flashes of wit and 
shrewdness, justified the epithet. He was the 
butt and target of all the boors for twenty miles 



around. If any farmer, or farmer's son, or ser- 
ving-man, wished to be witty at the very cheap- 
est rate and smallest possible expenditure of 
thought, no better luck could betide him than 
to chance upon foolish Will. If a gallant was 
anxious to obtain the reputation of vast face- 
tiousness and great brilliancy of intellect with 
his mistress, his fortune could be no sooner 
made than by having poor Robin drop in to 
have a few small, innocent jests thrust into his 
pin-cushion brain without reply. 

But Solomon Clarion found better matter and 
better services in Will than these. He saw in 
the poor varlet concealed veins of feeling and 
odd streaks of fancy, checkering what the world 
considered his vacant heart and blank intellect. 
He saw in him innocence and purity, a sense of 
love, and a deep sense of attachment wasted 
(unless some human being like himself chose to 
garner them for the simple owner) on dogs, and 
birds, and horses, and others of the thoughtless 
tribe. 

Conversation with Will, too, though sadly 
strange and disjointed, occasionally let the light 
in, as it were through the chinks of a disorder- 
ed brain, upon curious trains, and passages of 
thought. At times, he garnished his remarks 
unconsciously with rare conceits that might 
have gained for a wiser man the reputation of 
a bountiful wit. 

" As true as I'm Will Robin," he exclaimed, 
one clear, fair evening, as they were returning 
together through a meadow, from a long sum- 
mer's day ramble, " yonder's Preacher Purdy's 
new white beaver hat — nailed up by the rim — 
Look !" 

Sol. Clarion gazed in the direction to which 
he pointed, and answered, " Why, Will, I see 
nothing where you point but the plain, old moon 
in her first quarter." 

" You may well call her plain," replied Will, 
catching a new thread of thought ; " if it be the 
moon (I'm not clear on that point yet), she is 
the only decent planet in the sky. She behaves 
something like, and keeps up a good bright light 
when it's wanted, and is dressed in good, home- 
ly, clean linen in the bargain; while your 
fiery old sun capers up and down in crimson vel- 
vet, making everybody lecherous and apoplec- 
tic — I don't care who knows it." 

" It's Preacher Purdy's hat, is it, Will ?" said 
Clarion, anxious to bring him back to his origi- 
nal suggestion, and to see what he would make 
of it. 

" Yes, it is Preacher Purdy's hat, I'm sure of 
that ; for don't I see the woolly nap on it now I 
look closer" — clapping his hand, folded like a 
telescope, to his eye, and watching as two or 
three fleecy clouds crossed the disc of the plan- 
et — "what a beautiful wren-house and place 
for swallows and martens ! I wish my little flock 
of blue-coated beauties had as good quarters — 
it's softer and nicer than an old black hat. But 
the preacher'll have to go bare-headed to meet- 
ing next sabbath — that'll be funny !" And poor 
Will burst into a boisterous roar of laughter, 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. CLARION. 



23 



in winch Sol. was forced to join, for the sake of 
good fellowship. 

In all Sol. Clarion's jovial doings and merry- 
makings, Foolish Will was a faithful squire and 
attendant ; and, simple as was the brain of the 
strange creature, it always had sufficient saga- 
city to comprehend the drift and purpose of a 
joke of Sol's., and to furnish its little tribute of 
suggestions to help it forward. One day (it 
was Sunday, in June), it came into Sol. Clari- 
on's head to make a pilgrimage, with rod and 
line, to Rye Pond or Lake Westchester, some 
five or six miles distant from his home. He lay 
under an apple-tree, cogitating some method of 
safe and easy conveyance, when Foolish Will, 
in one of his wild capers, came rolling down the 
hill into the orchard, and directly against the 
ribs of the thoughtful Solomon. 

" Heigho !" cried he, " this is a new style of 
salutation on a Sunday morning. I have full 
confidence, Will, in your affection, without 
these heavy tokens. Be pleased to take off your 
carcass, and give me a comfortable morsel of 
advice." 

" Advice ! Sol., if you want that, it is but a 
stone's-throw to friend Bloom's, and he has 
enough to turn his own mill and some over for 
his neighbors. That's a fine owl of a fellow, 
his oldest son — I'm sure of that, Solomon !" and 
he twisted his face as nearly into an outline of 
the bird's visnomy, as his smooth features would 
allow. 

" Never mind Booby Bloom, Will," continued 
Clarion, " I'm bent for a fishing excursion to- 
day." 

" And want me to hang on, as a poor worm, 
for a bait I suppose ;" and an altogether unne- 
cessary tear filled the eye of the gentle-hearted 
fool. 

" No, no, Will, not for that," returned Solo- 
mon, in a persuasive accent. " No, Willie, you 
must borrow some good neighbor's horse and 
wagon and ride with me." 

" Black snakes and tree-toads take me if I 
will," exclaimed poor Robin, " I'll ride without 
loan or purchase. There's old Bloom's black 
nag running at large in the woods ; all the 
family's away to meeting, save blind Dick and 
deaf aunt Sally. Come, I'll bring down gran'fa- 
ther's rusty saddle, and we'll mount and shog 
off. Come," he concluded, taking Ckmon by 
the hand, and drawing him up from his recum- 
bent position, " come, Master Solomon, it's the 
best thing we can do." And so Master Solo- 
mon seemed to think too, for he leaped up, ran 
into the house, and in a trice brought forth a 
dusty demipique saddle and broken bridle, 
which latter he handed to Foolish Will. They 
soon reached the 'voods together, the black nag 
was speedily caparisoned, and they were on 
their way to the lond. 

That was a deU jious day to the soul of Sol. 
Clarion. Grave/ )ys, if I may so speak, and 
pleasing sadness blended together, and steeped 
him in a stream of pure delight. Nature on the 
one side opened her fair page, and on the other 



side sat Will Robin, a most rare and queer 
commentator, turning all things into fantastic 
shapes, and startling the woods and the waters 
with fancies never before heard. Before Sol., 
as he sat upon a jutting rock embowered in 
trees, the cheek of the sweet pond swelled with 
the curve and fulness of beauty itself; kissed by 
forest shadows, that here and there fell like ca- 
resses from the waving trees. Now and then a 
stray duck started out from the shore, and flew, 
like a silent thought, to an opposite quarter of 
the lake ; or a water-snake slipped, from its 
sunny covert on the margin, back into its na- 
tive element. Afar the meadows stretched and 
swelled into gentle hills, wliich lay basking in 
the sun, with an ox or horse now and then steal- 
ing quietly across the landscape. Behind them 
(the Prince of Darkness must have a foot- 
hold somewhere !) Bloom's black nag is teth- 
ered in the bushes, munching a handful of 
fresh clover. 

"See yonder thick-skinned philosopher!" 
said Will Robin, pointing to an old turtle that 
had perched himself upon a rock in the middle 
of the pond, " I suppose he has mounted that 
dry pulpit to hold forth to his watery congrega- 
tion. D'ye know Solomon (Master Solomon, 
I mean), that I sometimes think that these tur- 
tles are evil spirits, that haunt ponds and marsh- 
es, in the same way as bad men run up and down 
the world with wicked designs. That fellow's 
like a watchman in his box, that I've heard tell 
of in the city, he sees everybody, but no one 
(unless the great Jehovah) can see the workings 
and twistings of his ugly face in his shell. I 
believe that vile turtle yonder is Satan," con- 
cluded Will, his eyes gleaming with supernatu- 
ral light, and his frame trembling with some 
sudden fear suggested by the allusion, " for I 
saw him snap a poor sinner of a fly in his jaws ; 
and now see he's going to bear him down with 
him to hell — to hell — to hell !" And poor Robin 
mumbled the last phrase over and over, as the 
turtle glided slowly from the rock and disap- 
peared. About sunset they returned home, and 
loosed the black nag in the woods from which 
they had taken him. 

The next morning, just after breakfast, a man 
about forty-five years of age presented himself 
at the door in a brown, quaker-cut coat, low 
shoes, and a pair of loose, gray pantaloons, that 
flaunted about his ankles. Furthermore, he had 
a short nose, and a broad-brimmed hat, from un- 
derneath which a stiff, bristling shock of hair 
spread out over his coat-collar like the tail of a 
young wren. 

" A good morning to thee, my friends," said 
this personage, through his short organ, " and 
a very good morning to thee, my young friend, 
after that pleasant ride of thine on the Lord's 
day, and on a stolen horse !" 

These latter words were more particularly 
addressed to our friend Solomon, who sat on a 
bench at the feet of the old people, his grand- 
father and grandmother. Clarion Mushed, and 
the old people turned pale at the heinous and 



24 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



diabolical cnarge. They were so completely 
astounded, that they sat silent. 

" My young friend," continued Mr. Bloom, 
giving a not very amicahle look at Solomon, 
" I'll tell thee what, I will not put thee in the 
White Plains' jail this time, but I will give thee | 
some wholesome advice." Perhaps Sol. Clarion 
would have chosen the jail rather than the ad- 
vice ; but Friend Bloom gave him no option, 
and proceeded : " Abandon that crack-brain 
William Robin to his fate ; go to thy school 
many more times than thou dost ; spend thy ho- 
lydays nearer at home ; and ride not my black 
mare to the Pond without my permission." He 
then addressed a solemn chapter of advice and 
admonition to Sol's, grandfather and grand- 
mother, and wiping the corner of his mouth with 
his coat-sleeve, placidly disappeared through 
the same door that introduced him to the reader. 

Solomon Clarion was now fast verging tow- 
ard manhood. In a few days, he would be en- 
titled (besides a moderate sum of ready money) 
to enter upon whatever right he possessed in a 
small cantle of property (three or four acres, 
with a house) that his mother had bequeathed 
to him. An uncle of Solomon's — this was the 
present situation of the property — had purchased 
or paid a mortgage upon it given by Mrs. Cla- 
rion, and taken possession and enjoyed it ever 
since her death, upon that barren title. Pos- 
session he still maintained, and refused to hold 
any conversation with young Clarion on the 
subject. A neighboring farmer, into whose 
land the acres in question made an awkward 
elbow, was anxious to buy Solomon's title, and 
dispossess the unlawful occupant. In this per- 
plexity, Sol. thought he would have recourse to 
a legal gentleman whom he had heard Will 
Robin often mention. This was Lawyer Dou- 
blet, a strange old man, some fourscore years 
old who lived upon the road, not far from the 
city of Peth : and upon him he resolved to call. 

Accordingly, one morning about a week be- 
fore his minority expired, Solomon set out, in 
company with Will, for the residence of Coun- 
sellor Peter Doublet. In a short time, they 
reached an ancient-looking stone house ; and, 
poor Robin knocking at the door, and inquiring 
for the legal genius of the place, they were usher- 
ed up stairs : and here Clarion was introduced 
by his friend Will to Lawyer Doublet, and was 
particularly struck with his appearance. As 
that venerable advocate rose and came forward 
with a very graceful bow to welcome them, he 
presented to Sol's, eye a well-preserved model 
of mortality, with a flowing white wig, like 
that in the portraits of Sir Isaac Newton, curl- 
ing over his shoulders ; a black velvet coat, 
with silver buttons, and skirts stiffened with 
buckram, covering a very moderate set of 
limbs ; a scarlet vest beneath the same ; a set i 
of white small clothes joining black silk hose, 
and shoes with huge silver buckles. 

The personal history of this antique-looking 
member of the bar dwelt under a haze of con- ! 
siderable obscurity. It was rumored that hej 



had taken an active part on the royalist side 
during the revolutionary war. and now lived 
upon a pension which he received from the 
king's coffers. He still preserved and strictly 
maintained the vesture and habits of the last 
century, and obstinately refused to lay aside the 
smallest tittle or thread of his dress, or to abate 
a single jot of the severity of ancient manners. 
In truth, he was a creature of past times. The 
best part of his life had lain in the eighteenth 
century, and he was, in a manner, a trespasser 
upon the territory of the nineteenth. All his 
thoughts and feelings dated back forty years. 
He saw every object through time's telescope 
inverted. The books that he read and quoted, 
the cogitations that he cogitated, the opinions 
he delivered, were all musty with age. 

The apartment into which Clarion had been 
introduced was in character with its curious 
proprietor. From the windows hung old dam- 
ask curtains, with gold-lace borders, which per- 
mitted a mild twilight to creep through the 
room, part of which fell upon an ancient case 
of books fastened against the opposite wall. 
Every volume was black with years. Behind 
a little low table, strown with pieces of parch- 
ment, silver-hilted pens, and curious old pipes 
and snuff-boxes, stood a high-backed chair with 
a red leather cushion, ornamented with a pair 
of raised cock-pheasants fighting a duel under 
an oak-branch similarly executed, and striving 
to pick each other's eyes out : a very happy il- 
lustration of the benefits of sprightly litigation ! 

When the whole party was seated, Sol. Cla- 
rion briefly opened his case, and stated his 
strong desire to sell the land to Farmer Bull, 
who had offered a fair price : mentioning at the 
same time Farmer Bull's reluctance to pay a 
very large sum for making and drawing the 
deed, and his own unwillingness to become a 
party to an ejectment suit against his uncle. 

" I see the remedy, Mr. Clarion," said Law- 
yer Doublet, rising under considerable excite- 
ment, and pacing to and fro between his high- 
backed chair and the window ; " I see it, sir, 
as clear as a plea in chancery with twelve 
branches !" 

" And pray what is it, if you please, sir ?" 
asked Solomon, in breathless expectation. 

"Nothing less, sir, than livery of seisin!" 
and he looked earnestly into Clarion's face, ex- 
pecting, no doubt, to see it brighten with joy at 
this fortunate and profound suggestion. 

" Will that cost much ?" inquired Sol. Cla- 
rion. 

"No, sir; a mere trifle. It is the cheapest, 
and plainest, and wisest, and noblest, &c, &c. 
process ever devised by brain of man for con- 
veyance of lands ! — If I knew the author of it, 
my young friend, I would plant Ms bust up 
there : and you, my good old king" — addressing 
himself to a bronze head of George II., stand- 
ing on the top of his book-case — " you would 
have to tramp ! — ' when the sage comes up, the 
king goes down,' Mr. Clarion, as the Baker's 
broadside of 1790 hath it." 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. CLARION. 



25 



" Yes," humbly suggested Poor Will, " ' and 
ten to one both have a cracked crown. 5 Your 
sage addles his in attempting to stuff it too full 
of reading, and your king breaks his in attempt- 
ing to stretch it larger !" and Will burst into a 
hearty laua;h, while Sol. Clarion smiled. 

This sally, however, was not quite so well 
received by Counsellor Doublet, who assumed 
a portentous look of professional consequence ; 
and thrusting his hands into his hinder coat- 
pockets, strided up and down the room, re- 
buking the unfortunate Robin for his audacity 
m trying wits with Peter Doublet, Esquire, 
counsellor, who had Touchstone at his finger's 
end, and was so profoundly read in the Twelve 
Tables, as to sometimes believe himself to have 
been one of the framers of the same. 

Will apologised humbly (Clarion aiding him), 
and they relapsed into business. 

" 1 will prepare the papers that are necessary 
between yourself, Mr. Clarion, and Mr. Obed 
Bull," continued Counsellor Doublet, with more 
gravity and weight of manner than he had at 
first exhibited, " and next Wednesday (I think 
Tuesday is your twenty-first birthday, Mr. Cla- 
rion :" Clarion nodded acknowledgment), " next 
Wednesday morning we will ride to the proper- 
ty, myself and you, Mr. Clarion, and Mr. Bull ; 
and this poor creature may go with us ; perhaps 
he may minister some trifling service : and there 
we will deliver possession by livery of seisin 
under the old law (the d — 1 taking, if he please, 
lease and release, and such modern traps and 
tricks of pettifoggers)." 

An hour was named for the parties to assem- 
ble at the house of Lawyer Doublet ; Clarion 
and Will. Robin arose to depart, and with them 
rose the counsellor himself, and opening the 
door, he heralded the way down stairs, unfast- 
ened the front-door, and, standing uncovered 
upon the stone porch, he bowed twice or thrice, 
and ceremoniously bade Solomon Clarion " a 
good day — with God's blessing !" 

Promptly at the appointed hour, Sol. Clarion, 
on a bright bay horse, borrowed from a neigh- 
bor, and Foolish Will Robin on a rough colt, 
obtained in a similar manner, wheeled up to the 
door of Lawyei Doublet. In a short time, the 
counsellor came forth, dressed as we have de- 
I him, with the additional personal orna- 
ments of a sword at his side, with a silver hilt, 
a cocked hat, fringed with gold lace, on his 
Read, arid a blue bag, containing his papers and 
documents, under his arm. As he stepped from 
the porch, a high, raw-boned steed, of a mixed 
sorrel complexion, was brought up, tricked out 
in an antique martingale, old double bits, a 
korsc-cover in the style of the revolution, and 
a saddle abouH fifty years old. With the aid of 
Foolish Will, Counsellor Doublet, having care- 
fully attached tin; blue bag to the saddle-bows, 
mounted into the broad shovel-stirrups, and be- 
i lew minutes joined by Mr. Obed Hull, 
in a. Iiuii coat, the party set out for the scene 
of action, which was about three miles up the 



the dames of King street, as they galloped 
along. Each moment a head was thrust out 
from some shrew T d post of observation, and 
some new face broadened with wonder at be- 
holding Counsellor Doublet riding between Bull 
and Clarion, the representative and memento 
of times that they had heard grandsires and old 
women only speak of. The rustics in the field 
paused in their labor, and leaned upon their 
rakes or plough-tails to gaze with dilating eyes. 
The horses turned their heads in the furrow 
and stared ; the oxen licked their hairy cheeks 
in admiration ; and it was said, with some show 
of truth, that a tin pigeon, acting as weather- 
cock on Farmer Barley's farm, wheeled about 
on its pivot, in spite of the wind, and rolled its 
painted eye-balls and shook its painted tail in 
wonder and astonishment. 

It was a glorious day in mid- August; serene, 
tranquil, beautiful. The sky was without spot 
or wrinkle of cloud on its clear, blue surface. 
On each side of the road tall pear-trees stood, 
swarming with rich, ripe fruit ; near every house 
lay an orchard, enamelled with countless col- 
ored apples, red, green, damask, yellow, and 
white, of every kind. In one field that they 
passed, half a dozen fresh-looking countrymen 
were at work laying the stout grass upon the 
ground, like files of proud soldiers, gay with 
green feathers flaunting in the wind in the 
morning — at eve to be dry and withered. In a 
neighboring meadow, a sportsman in a fustian 
hunting-coat, and white hat, with shot-pouch, 
powder-flask, and gun, was creeping along the 
fence to obtain a shot at a meadow-lark sitting 
on a rock in the middle of the meadow. He 
steals closer and closer. In a moment, the 
merry-maker of the skies will lie stretched on 
the cold stone. Peal-it ! peal-it ! peal-it ! is 
the sound issuing from a stout throat in yonder 
tree. It is the cry of a sentinel lark, and that 
is his watchtower. His winged brother takes 
notice, and in a twinkling curves far along the 
air, beyond the reach of gun or sportsman. 

Away the four horsemen gallop ; Will Robin 
dropping a little in the rear, to dismount and 
catch a woodchuck, which was perambulating 
a fence by way of exercise, after a hearty meal 
of clover. 

This enterprise is nipped in the bud by Sol. 
Clarion's falling back with poor Robin, and 
asking what he was slipping out of his saddle 
for. 

"It's our duty, Master Sol., to look after the 
belly," said Will, "and I was thinking that 
woo'chuck, which has nothing to do, now that 
he's taken his breakfast, I > n t. to be cooked, 
would make a nice pie for supper when we got 
home." 

Foolish Will's anxiety about provender was 
very soon allayed, by Clarion's announcing to 
him that they expected to dine at Farmer Bull's 
as they returned, and that a fat JTOUng turkey 
was in preparation. Will's eye sparkled at the 
avory announcement, >m'A thej speedily re- 



road. They formed a gallant spectacle ibr gained their places in the cavalcade. 



26 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



On a scaffold in front of a weather-beaten, 
yellow farm-house which they passed, a gay 
parly of travelling carpenters were at work. 
There is something charming to the fancy in 
the strolling life of these country Chips. They 
ramble about pleasant villages and country 
places — your only modern Amphions and Trou- 
badours — singing their cheerful catches, and 
building as they sing. Half a dozen choice 
journeymen cluster together, and form a merry 
crew, plying the chisel and mallet in rural 
neighborhoods ; repairing, like these, some time- 
worn farm-house, or raising up in more bustling 
parts a snug cottage, to be the harbor of happy 
spirits for many blooming and fragrant years, or 
like a flock of piping swallows chirping about a 
breach in the roof of some venerable old church. 
Now and then bandying a jest with the plump 
kitchen- wench (it matters not whether she be 
black or white — they will have their joke !), or 
indulging in a sly inuendo among themselves 
at the expense of the blushing, young-married 
couple, whose home they are finishing. Every- 
where, too, they are regaled with grateful vi- 
ands — healthful breakfasts — hearty dinners — 
genial suppers ; " We must have something 
good," says the housewife, " for to-morrow the 
carpenters are coming !" 

Shortly after they had passed this jovial com- 
pany of workmen, they reached a small wooden 
house, with a dry, dull aspect, as if it had been 
pelted with all the winds and weathers of half 
a century, without the defence of paint or color 
of any kind. It stood upon a knoll facing the 
north, and had a solitary, lonely appearance, as 
they came upon it. In front was a small court- 
yard with barn-yard and poultry-yard blended 
with it, and tying their horses to the rough 
bar-fence that surrounded it, they all dismount- 
ed, and entered a clumsy gate, which opened 
into the enclosure, except Foolish Will, who, 
under a direction from Counsellor Peter, scam- 
pered off up the road. The counsellor then 
unhooked his blue bag from its place at the 
saddle-bows, and hugging it under his right 
arm, marched with great solemnity up to the 
door of the house, accompanied by Bull in a 
buff coat, and Clarion in green pantaloons. 
Here he planted himself upon the steps leading 
to the same, and laying down his cocked hat 
and blue bag with great deliberation upon a 
neighboring bench, he stood erect and surveyed 
the three acres and a half of arable land to be 
conveyed to Obed Bull, farmer, with monstrous 
complacency and inward satisfaction. In a few 
minutes, Will Robin came dashing down the 
highway with great expedition and heat, and 
announced to Counsellor Doublet that " none 
was to be got !" meaning that he could obtain 
no persons to attend the important ceremonies 
about to take place, as witnesses. " Then off 
your horse," cried out Mr. Peter Doublet in an 
ecstasy of authority, " blow this vile tin horn ! 
— that will make our proceedings public — and, 
perhaps, answer as well !" At this behest, 
Foolish Will dismounted, and seizing the abject 



piece of metal, sounded a dozen or two of round 
blasts ; and in answer, one lazy-looking young 
negro was brought out of the fields (mistaking 
it innocently for the dinner-blast, although it 
was now only about ten in the morning), and a 
limping old farmer from across the way, who 
came hobbling into the yard, staring at Lawyer 
Doublet as if he had been a genuine phantom 
in a velvet coat, flowing wig, and white small- 
clothes. Fortunately, there was no one in the 
house, or they would have been brought down 
upon the party in a twinkling by this uproari- 
ous summons : the barbaroiis uncle of Clarion 
being some distance down the road, helping a 
farmer get in his hay, and the lazy-looking ne- 
gro boy alone having charge in his absence. 
" Now we will proceed to livery of seisin, as 
settled in Madox and Craig !" said Peter Dou- 
blet, fumbling in his blue bag, " and first, I will 
read in the presence of these many good wit- 
nesses the warrant of attorney, whereby I am 
empowered to fulfil feoffment of this house and 
land." And saying this, he recited, in a good 
old-man's voice, the contents of a paper which 
he had disinterred from its azure sepulchre, con- 
taining power, authority, warrant, &c, to con- 
vey said house and land in the name and stead 
of Solomon Clarion, of the city of Peth, to Obed 
Bull, of King street ; and then, drawing forth a 
second paper from the same blue receptacle, he 
proceeded to declare the contents thereof— de- 
scribing the tenement, with all the appurte- 
nances, standing thus and thus, and the lands 
belonging to the same, running with this brook, 
and under that tree, with a white flint-stone at 
its extreme corner. 

He then said, descending from his elevation, 
" Neighbors and witnesses ! leave these grounds, 
while I do deliver seisin and possession of the 
same to worthy Obed Bull !" — and, after they 
had retired into the road, and stood looking 
over the fence at the further progress of this in- 
teresting ceremony, he continued, plucking up 
a huge clod in his hand, " Mr. Obed Bull, I do 
hereby, in the name and by the authority and 
attorney's warrant of Solomon Clarion, deliver 
to thee seisin and possession of these lands, and 
all rights thereto appertaining, as described in 
the witliin deed." 

At this precise stage of their proceedings, 
Mr. Uriah Bloom, the short-nosed Quaker, 
chanced that way on a rusty-gray nag, and, 
wheeling up to the fence, turned about in his 
saddle, with a face wonderfully full of a mag- 
nanimous pity, and portentous of a very speedy 
discharge of comment and denunciation. 

" Why friend Obed Bull," said he, through 
his short organ, " I did not truly expect to see 
thee, a man of much worldly sense and upright- 
ness, engaged in this heathenish folly, with that 
old white-wigged, silly-pated tory, Peter Doub- 
let ! Thou knewest better, Obed, thou knew- 
est better ! But I will leave thee to thine own 
practices, and punishments sequent thereon !" 
Saying this he turned and cantered at consider- 
able speed on his journey down the road. Not 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. CLARION. 



27 



more than five minutes had elapsed before the 
broad-brimmed hat and short nose of the quaker 
again came in view, hurrying back with an ad- 
ditional rider behind him on the rusty, gray nag. 
When the face of this new actor made itself 
visible, it struck considerable alarm in the bosom 
of Will Robin, and Mr. Solomon Clarion. It 
was the barbarous uncle. The approaching 
steed, thus doubly freighted, was however hid- 
den by the house from the gaze of Mr. Obed 
Bull and Counsellor Doublet; which latter 
worthy was proceeding with great vigor in the 
process of livery of seisin. 

He had again mounted the stone steps, search- 
ed the house to find whether it was wholly 
empty, and fit for delivery, and laying his hand 
upon the iron hasp of the door, exclaimed, " I 
do hereby, in the name, and by the warrant of 
Solomon Clarion, deliver to thee, Obed Bull, 
seisin and possession of this house and all unto 
it that appertains ! Enter into this tenement 
and God give thee joy of it." At that moment 
a large red rooster who had stood a long time 
upon the barn-yard fence, in patient expectation 
of a hearing, and who seemed inclined to per- 
form the part of clerk in these services, opened 
his throat and made the responses to Counsellor 
Doublet, in a clear, audible voice : Mr. Obed 
Bull seized the hasp, opened the door, and had 
just thrust his foreleg across the threshold to 
enter, when, lo ! he was met full in the face by 
the barbarous uncle (unlawful occupant of the 
premises), with a stout oak cudgel in his hand, 
who dealt the said Obed Bull, donee, &c, 
several very hearty tokens of admiration of the 
conduct he had pursued in purchasing said land, 
and obtaining livery of seisin as aforesaid. " I'll 
give your liver-a' seasoning — you lout !" cried 
the barbarous uncle, as he plied the flail. " I'll 
mark your title down in black and white !" and 
he dealt him a sore blow over the bridge of the 
nose. By this time Mr. Obed Bull had evaded 
the cudgel, and the next object that fell into the 
clutches of the barbarous uncle was Peter 
Doublet, Esquire, who in consequence of his 
age, was not ribroasted and bastinadoed after 
the fashion of Mr. Bull, but was taken by the 
collar of his velvet coat, and quietly kicked 
through the garden-gate into the road. Mean- 
while Friend Bloom had found his way silently 
into the front room of the tenement, and half 
opening a window shutter, looked cautiously 
on the scene ; his short nose and broad-brimmed 
hat being skilfully concealed in the shadow of 
the shutter. The barbarous uncle tossed Doub- 
let's gold-laced cocked hat over the fence, with 
the blue bag. The Counsellor picking up the 
former, and placing it upon his head, and Fool- 
ish Will gathering the scattered papers and 
parchments and thrusting them into the latter, 
the party mounted their horses (Mr. Bull with 
great difficulty), and turned their heads expe- 
ditiously homeward. They had not travelled 
far, however, in this direction, before they 
slightly slackened their pace, and Mr. Peter 
Doublet muttered, " Bv the head of King George, 



and the Pandects of Justinian ! Mr. Clarion, I'll 
have revenge and satisfaction on that scurvy 
uncle of thine before the week wanes ! yea 
will I !" and he struck his sorrel a smart blow 
across the foreshoulder, " I'll to the Supreme 
Court of Justice at once, and attach him with a 
mandamus writ of privilege !" The little law- 
yer hereupon lifted his cocked hat from his head, 
and, carefully shaking the dust from its border, 
replaced it with an air of much dignity, in its 
original position. Then turning upon Sol. 
Clarion, he asked in a tone of surprise, as if it 
had just crossed his mind, " Why, Mr. Clarion, 
didst thou not come to our rescue ? being young 
and strong sinewed we might have justly looked 
aidment and reinforcement from thee !" 

To this Solomon simply replied, that, how- 
ever much he might dislike his uncle, he was 
unwilling to come to blows with his mother's 
brother. 

At length Foolish Will rode up to the side of 
Sol. Clarion, and the conversation took a new 
channel. 

" I'm getting tired of this region of country," 
said Foolish Will, " the people about here are 
growing cold-hearted toward poor Will ; and 
poor Will's getting to be a man," sitting bolt 
upright in his saddle, " and must go travel and 
make voyages and see a little of the world ? 
What say you, Master Solomon, Will Robin 
leaves you to-morrow, and perhaps for ever !" 
At this announcement the innocent creature 
shed a tear upon the mane of his rough colt, 
and stretched out his left hand toward Sol. Cla- 
rion ; and Sol. Clarion, bringing his horse close 
to his side, grasped it warmly with his own, and 
said, while tears gushed to his eyes, "Never! 
Will, never ! — Though I am robbed of my rights 
— there's yet enough left for us both ; and, Will 
Robin, long as the world lasts, though all the 
world else may turn you from their hearts and 
hearths, there's always a warm corner for you 
here !" And Sol. Clarion, in the genuine hon- 
esty of nature, struck his hand upon his bosom. 
" But whither did you purpose to go, Will !" 
said he, mastering his emotion, and resuming 
the discourse, while he looked earnestly in the 
face of Foolish Will for a reply. 

" I thought," responded Will, " I would take 
the coach for New York, and see if I could find 
anybody in that big city, which I've heard tell 
swarms with people just like a hive in summer, 
that looked like Will Robin ; all the folks in 
these parts despise the poor vagrant !" 

« Why Will," replied Sol. Clarion, " I'm go- 
ing to the city myself to-morrow ; will you bear 
me company ?" 

" I will ! I will !" exclaimed that worthy, 
greatly excited, and almost jumping out of his 
saddle with the violence of his delight. 

"To-night, then, pack up our garments in the 
old portmanteau ; yours, Will, in one end, mine 
in the other, and we'll take the stage with the 
first cock that crows !" 

" Yes !" said Will, still in an ecstasy of enjoy- 
ment at the brilliant prospect of travel, k * and 



28 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



I'll go to York in a new dress ; something 
fine. I guess it will astonish the natives." 
Hereupon Will discharged a heavy peal of 
laughter, and at that moment they found them- 
selves in the renowned city of Peth, at the door 
of Sol. Clarion's home ; those twin martyrs, 
Mr. Bull and Counsellor Doublet, having in 
the meantime galloped down the road and out 
of sight. 

The next morning Will Robin was awake 
with the dawn ; and the sun had no sooner ex- 
hibited his jolly face from his eastern tippling- 
shop, than Will Robin's corresponding feature 
shone through the portals of Sol. Clarion's 
dwelling, upon the whole subjacent region. 
Will was all smiles and complacency ; bustling 
from spot to spot ; now taking up the dinner- 
horn and blowing an idle blast and laying it 
down again ; and now dashing into the house 
to obtain some trifling commodity, and again 
bursting through the door into the open air, to 
stuff" it into the capacious portmanteau. At the 
hour when the stage arrived Foolish Will pre- 
sented himself as a passenger, tricked out in a 
short brown coat, with something of the qua- 
ker lurking about the collar, though it had alto- 
gether fled from the skirts, which were swallow- 
tailed ; close homespun pantaloons ; a mon- 
strous pair of jack -boots, borrowed from Sol. 
Clarion's grandfather, and, upon his head, a 
sugar-loaf, white felt hat, picked up in some 
random pilgrimage to the garret of Counsellor 
Doublet. Sol. Clarion, who lingered behind 
Will Robin, having affectionately parted with 
his grand-parents, and received God-speed, came 
forth modestly attired in a plain, country-made, 
black hat, a dark-blue coat with metal buttons, 
and other parts of dress to correspond. They 
both took up their position on a high back seat, 
outside, which overlooked the whole vehicle, 
turned their faces for a last look at the old 
homestead, the driver cracked his whip, the 
stage whirled off, and in a moment the city of 
Peth, and all that it held, was lost from their 
gaze. 

They had not travelled far down the turnpike 
before a new and unexpected object arrested 
their progress. This was nothing less than that 
learned and sagacious legal authority, Peter 
Doublet, clad in his black-velvet coat, white 
small-clothes, and gold-laced cocked hat, with 
his sword at his side, three or four musty vol- 
umes under one arm, and under the other the 
portentous blue bag, with an appearance of un- 
usual rotundity and repletion. Sol. Clarion was 
not a little surprised at this apparition, at this 
peculiar time, particularly as Mr. Doublet ex- 
claimed to the driver, " I will take a seat, sir, 
with my friends on the outside ; more especially 
as I shall need their services when I get into 
town, and wish, therefore, to keep my eye upon 
them !" Saying this, he passed his three or four 
dull looking volumes and well stuffed blue bag 
up to Will, and very speedily mounted after 
them, into the third seat in the rear. 

" How is this. Counsellor Doublet ?" asked 



Sol. Clarion, shaking him by the hand, as the 
mail-stage again started off. " Whither are 
you travelling, Mr. Doublet, if I may put so 
bold a question ?" 

" I am travelling, Mr. Clarion," replied the 
counsellor, solemnly, " in quest of my lost pro- 
fessional honor. Yesterday morning I had it — 
this morning I awoke, and where was it ? Where 
was it ?" he asked again, lifting his voice as if 
addressing a jury. " You ask me, sir, whither 
I travel. I journey to the city of New York to 
obtain a mandamus writ of privilege as an of- 
ficer of the court !" With this answer to Cla- 
rion's interrogatory, Lawyer Doublet sunk into 
a dignified silence, which was steadily preserved 
for almost the entire remainder of the journey. 
Onward the stage-coach rolled, here disgorging 
a heavy leather bag, filled with letters, like the 
moon, that planetary night-coach, discharging 
aereolites, pleasant missives of her goddesship ; 
there taking up a chance passenger, and again 
rumbling on its way for miles without pause or 
diversion, unless the hurling of a brown-paper 
parcel, or some other slight token from friends up 
the road, like a bomb, into an open door or win- 
dow be so considered. In this way they rolled 
down into the pleasant village of Rye, and 
through that Huguenot stronghold, New Ro- 
chelle, taking a bird's-eye view of Mamaroneck, 
Pelham, and sundry other towns and townlets, 
as they glanced along. 

Ever and anon Will Robin enlivened the jour- 
ney by carolling forth fragments of rare and 
reverend ditties, such as " As I walked forth on 
a morning in the month of May," or imparting 
to his selections an air of greater sententious- 
ness and profundity, as in the following scrap 
of shrewd rhyme : 

"A man of words and not of deeds. 
Is like a garden full of weeds ; 
And when the weeds begin to grow, 
He's like a garden full of snow," &c. 

At Eastchester, a spruce, spare man, in a fur 
cap, with a large white cauliflower stuck in the 
button-hole of a purple frock-coat, and a slate- 
colored game-cock under his left arm, came 
forth. There was something peculiarly queer 
and quizzical about this person's nose and 
mouth ; a playful smile that rippled about the 
corners of the latter feature, like a rivulet with 
the sun shining on its surface, and a red glow 
hovering over the tip of the former, which seem- 
ed to be the humorous smile lingering above its 
birthplace before it disappeared from the odd 
little countenance for ever. 

The spruce spare man was anew passenger, 
who, seeing the single vacancy in the high out- 
side occupied by Doublet, Clarion, and Will, 
said, " I'll take that seat, driver, as I'd like to 
make an observation or two on nature as we 
go along. P'r'aps, gentlemen," turning to the 
worthy trio, " it'll not be inconvenient to have 
some pleasant conversation on natural won- 
ders and such like, as we travel. Besides, young 
Joseph," affectionately ogling his game-cock 
with one eye, and a brace of young ladies with 



THE ADVENTURES OF SOL. CLARION. 



29 



in the stage-coach with the other, as he mount- 
ed into his seat, " might be inclined to play the 
physician inside there, and draw blood from 
the hands of those fair creatures without being 
reg'larly called in !" 

At this sally the indescribable smile kindled 
about the mouth of the spruce passenger — the 
corresponding glow lit up the extremity of his 
nose, and, patting the slate-colored creature un- 
der his arm kindly on his crest, he sat for a 
moment intensely silent. 

"Gentlemen/' said he, warming into a fine 
flow of talk as the stage-coach rattled on, " the 
sooner we're known to each other the better. 
My name," bowing at each branch of the an- 
nouncement to one of the King street travellers^ 
"my name is Paul — Hyaena — Patchell; but 
you'll oblige me when you call upon me — for I 
intend to invite you all to my house before we 
part — by inquiring for P. Hyaena Patchell. I 
prefer that style, as you'll perceive it's more 
ferocious, and better suited for the keeper of a 
wild-beast show, and the greatest collection of 
natural wonders now extant in the four quar- 
ters ! I have been," continued the smart show- 
man, " scouring the country for a five-legged 
calf, to complete my collection ; or a cow, with 
the horns growing upon her flanks. Confound 
the stupid creatures ! they put me out. I couldn't 
as much as find one with even a moderate swel- 
ling to pass for a dromedary. Nevertheless I've 
met with a little success," brushing down the 
feathers of young Joseph cautiously, "gentle- 
men, I've picked up a game-cock with a face just 
like General Jackson. See !" holding up the 
slate-colored bird, " every line's distinct — here's 
the warlike nose, the warrior eye, and," at this 
moment one of the legs of the interesting crea- 
ture slipped from his hand, and dashed two thirds 
of a spur into the smart showman's wrist, who 
exclaimed, smiling faintly, "by the Bengal lion, 
the general has just drawn his sword !" The 
conversation of the showman had been sustained 
in so high a pitch of voice as to be generally 
overheard, and a loud roar of laughter shook the 
mail-stage as he uttered this last remark. 

" Can you tell me, sir, as you seem to be sum- 
m'at of a philosopher, why horses aren't born 
asses ?" asked Foolish Will, of the smart show- 
man. On the latter gentleman's expressing a 
doubt of his ability to accommodate Mr. Robin 
with an answer, Will replied, " It's mainly, sir, 
for the want of ears !" And the smart show- 
man fell into a thoughtful silence of several 
minutes' duration. 

They were now rattling over Harlaem bridge. 
The smart showman had again opened the flood- 
gate of discourse, and a vast deal of good con- 
versation passed between him and Will Robin 
on the subject of natural wonders ; a mermaid, 
with bowels of straw, belonging to him, that had 
been " burnt out" one night by an accidental 
■park falling upon her tail ; a famous Bengal 
linn, in lib; show, with the finest mouth of any 
animal of that species in Christendom; all of 

iich closed with the observation that he 



thought that the arrival of the general would 
create a great excitement in town, and a fer- 
vent invitation to Will and his friend Mr. Cla- 
rion, to call at 9 1-4 Bowery, and see his col- 
lection. 

Meantime, Clarion and Doublet were silent, 
until they came opposite Gallows hill, where 
an execution was taking place at that very time, 
and as Doublet beheld the poor victim dangling 
in the last agonies, he exclaimed — " My God ! 
what sight is yonder ! — A man by the neck ! If 
man," continued the counsellor, after a thought- 
ful pause — " if man were a poor dried pear or 
salted flitch of bacon, it would beseem well 
enough. It is bad enough to hang wolves and 
weasels, and other carrion. What a contempt 
must I have for my humanity, my young sir, 
when I see a part of it strung up yonder like a 
bunch of foul garlic or hetchelled flax !" These 
observations on the part of Mr. Doublet were 
very sensible and true-spirited, axd if he had 
ended there he would have deserved the name 
of a sober and thinking man, but in a moment 
he added, " Would to heaven ! Mr. Clarion, our 
law-makers might re-establish the noble trial by 
combat !" The erudition of the smart showman 
was here sadly at fault, and he was obliged to 
put two or three questions as to the character 
of this process, to Sol. Clarion, who replied that 
" it was a method of settling murders (he be- 
lieved) wherein the party accused of the homi- 
cide fell pell-mell, with bare fists, case-knife or 
other convenient weapon, upon the next of kin 
to the deceased, and the next of kin fell pell- 
mell in a similar manner upon the party accused, 
and they belabored and thrust at each other un- 
til one or the other's business accounts with 
this world were finally closed up and legercd, 
and the party thus disposed of was held to have 
been altogether in the wrong; and thus, you 
see," concluded Solomon, "the whole matter 
was settled without the expense of rope, judge, 
or jury ; sheriff, gallows-tree, or new breeches 
and bonnet to see the hanging in : the surviving 
combatant was fully satisfied, and the dead man 
never walked the earth at unseasonable hours !" 

By the time this judicious explanation was 
ended the coach had halted opposite a pleasant 
yellow house, with a slim, round cupola stuck 
on its roof, like a high-crowned Dutch hat, and 
a back-door, with a portico looking out into a 
cheerful graveyard. "I think this is the house," 
said Sol. Clarion to the driver, and a monger 
friend of the driver's jumped from the box, 
knocked at the door, and inquired if Dr. Nich- 
olas Grim lived there. At this, a pretty, blush- 
ing face was thrust out of a second-story win- 
dow, smiled softly at Solomon, and replied that 
he did, and disappeared in great haste. Sol. 
Clarion and Will Robin now dismounted, the 
former urging Counsellor Doublet to join them, 
who steadily refused, saying lie must look after 
his mandamus at once; the smart showman 
bowed and smirked, ana set his slate-colored . 
game-cock a-crowing — the driver cracked his v 
whip over the ear of his near leader, and the 



30 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



stage-coach whirled away. In a moment, the 
door of the yellow house opened, and a healthy, 
fat man, in a suit of black broadcloth, project- 
ed himself headlong almost into the arms of 
Sol. Clarion, exclaiming, " My dear Sol., is this 
you ? I am heartily glad to see you ! This is 
better than a new patient, or even a consulta- 
tion at the rich widow's. Why Sol., my dear 
fellow !" shaking him by the hand again at 
arms' length, " you look pale — a little fever, 
occasioned by riding in the wind. Come in ! 
come in !" putting one arm about his waist, 
and motioning toward the door, " oh ! here's 
your cousin Grace !" At this, the proprietor 
of the pretty blushing face that was thrust out 
of the second-story window came forward from 
behind a white pocket-handkerchief, and ex- 
tended her hand to Sol. Clarion, who received 
it with a similar demonstration, exclaiming, as 
he gave it a gentle pressure, " Ah ! Grace, you 
didn't visit poor Peth this year !" 

And she, smiling archly upon Mr. Clarion, 
replied, « Oh ! Sol., I am glad I did not ; for I 
imagine it has brought you down !" Then 
streaks of crimson and deep red flushed all over 
her neck and brow, as if she thought she had 
said more than it was proper for a maiden to 
disclose, and at the first opportunity she glided 
silently away, leaving the discourse with Dr. 
Nicholas Grim and his worthy nephew. 

Six short months had rolled around from this 
period, and Sol. Clarion was domiciliated with 
his good-hearted uncle — taking the place and 
fulfilling the duties of an apothecary, who had 
been his uncle's former assistant, and who had 
unfortunately died of the fumes of a new pill 
he was on the eve of discovering only a week 
before Sol. Clarion's arrival. Sol's, journey 
had been undertaken in consequence of a letter 
from Dr. Nicholas, warmly tendering the situa- 
tion ; and Sol. Clarion had accepted it, on con- 
dition that he should be allowed to bring Fool- 
ish Will with him, to serve prescriptions, use 
the pestle and mortar, and perform other simple 
services of a similar nature. Six pleasant 
months have slipped from the calendar, and 
now it becomes our duty, however painful, as 
faithful chroniclers, to open a strange and sin- 
gular chapter in the history of the generous son 
of iEsculapius in whose house our adventurer 
has found a cheerful home. 



THE VISION OF DR. NICHOLAS 
GRIM. 

CONTAINING THE CONCLUSION OF THE ADVEN- 
TURES OF SOL. CLARION. 

" Titty and Tiffin, Suckin 
f And Pidgen, Liard and Robin ! 

White spirits, black spirits, gray spirits, red spirits, 
Devil-toad, devil-ram, devil-cat, and devil-dam, 
Why Hoppo and Stadlin, Hellwain and Puckle !" 
The Witch : a Tragi-comedy, by Thos. Middleton. 

The pleasant yellow house of Dr. Nicholas 
Grim, with its slim, round cupola, stood in the 



skirts of the city. It was surrounded by a 
grassy door-yard, with a carriage-gate opening 
into the road on one side, another gate leading 
into a well-stocked garden in the rear, and a 
third facing the northeast, giving access to an 
orchard which had been transformed into a place 
of burial. The dwelling, with its appurtenances, 
had formerly belonged to a dry old curmudgeon, 
who had sold the fruit-ground in question, for a 
handsome consideration, to an undertaker^re- 
serving to himself, his heirs and devisees, a 
privilege through the orchard-gate. The study 
of Dr. Nicholas Grim looked directly forth upon 
this graveyard; and recollecting that not a few 
of his own patients were slumbering there, it is 
singular that the worthy practitioner had not 
chosen some other quarter of the building for 
his own use. Contemplating those little green 
hillocks, and those peculiar, square-cut stones, 
unpleasant thoughts might arise in the bosom 
of Dr. Grim ; particularly as it was hinted that 
the patients of Dr. Grim were allowed to enjoy 
the pleasure of that worthy Galen's acquaint- 
ance but a very short time after it was formed, 
and after he had administered his first prescrip- 
tion, and were forced by some urgent necessity 
to bid him an eternal farewell, and take their 
departure, post-haste, for another world. 

The truth is, that Dr. Nicholas, as fine- 
hearted and jovial a man as ever lived, was re- 
garded by some people as an arrant quack and 
pretender. However this might be, Dr. Grim 
was, and boasted himself to be, the discoverer 
of that invaluable catholicon, " The Patent 
Pioneer Pill." The ingenious inventor of 
this wonderful medicine never asserted that it 
could raise a man from the dead, by being ad- 
ministered to his corpse nine weeks after burial, 
nor that the cause of Methuselah's extraordi- 
nary longevity was the fact of his having taken 
a handful of the Patent Pioneer Pills in his 
coffee every morning at breakfast. But Dr. 
Nicholas Grim did profess that this astonishing 
pill could cure every shade and variety of dis- 
ease ; and that, in effecting a cure, it had a mode 
of operation peculiar to itself. 

" The Patent Pioneer Pill," said the doctor 
one day to Sol. Clarion, with a grave and sol- 
emn face, in explanation of its properties, " de- 
scends into the stomach like an ordinary medi- 
cal prescription or dose : when there, acted upon 
by the gastric juice, it loses its original shape 
and character, and becomes metamorphosed 
into a small apothecary, with a hard, granite 
complexion — that being, as you know, the origi- 
nal color of the bolus — and a lilliputian medical 
scalpel or shovel in his hand. Armed with this 
instrument, the little apothecary casts about the 
stomach to discover any impurities or obstruc- 
tions that may there exist, and at once sets about 
removing them with said scalpel or shovel into 
the great duct or canal, the rectum, which, 
acting like a sewer, carries them off. After 
having thus cleansed the grand chamber of the 
human body," continued Dr. Nicholas Grim, 
" the pill-apothecary commences travelling up 
the different alleys and by-ways of the system, 



THE VISION OF DR. NICHOLAS GRIM. 



31 



fulfilling the part of a philanthropic reformer 
wherever he travels — applying suitable reme- 
dies while on the spot (you see the advantages 
of this mode of practice, Solomon !) to scrofula, 
apoplexy, plethora, emaciation, dropsy, con- 
sumption, rheumatism, and every other con- 
ceivable malady. — So that by administering this 
renowned pill," concluded Dr. Grim, " we in 
fact despatch a pocket-physician, as it were, a 
kind of deputy where we are unable to attend 
in person" — here I must confess something of a 
sly smile crept over the features of the celebra- 
ted inventor — "on a tour of scientific investi- 
gation through the human constitution — a min- 
iature, medical Hercules, to knock in the head 
any monster of a malady that dares to show it- 
self. It was the proudest day of my life when 
I discovered the ingredients of the Patent Pio- 
neer Pill !" 

What was most singular, notwithstanding the 
doctor's lucid and philosophical exposition of 
the character and operation of the Patent Pio- 
neer Pill, its reception into the human stomach 
was, in nineteen cases out of twenty, followed, 
as I have before suggested, by the speedy trans- 
fer of the recipient from his own snug fireside, 
and comfortable suit of broadcloth or homespun, 
to a cold basement, without windows, under 
ground, and a disagreeable mahogany or cherry 
overcoat, furnished by that tailor to the corpse, 
— a sexton. In other words, a large majority 
of the patients of Dr. Nicholas Grim died upon 
his hands : so that his little apothecary with the 
granite complexion, who travelled interior, must, 
as Sol. Clarion insinuated, have very often lost 
his way ! 

Now opens that strange chapter in the his- 
tory of the doctor to which we have referred. 

It was a pleasant, tranquil afternoon in the 
latter part of July. Over all the region within 
view of the white round cupola of Dr. Grim, an 
unbroken silence hung. Within the house, 
there was perfect calm ; Sol. Clarion and Grace 
Grim were gone to the city in the doctor's gig, 
and their laughing dialogue and cheerful tread 
were not heard as was wont. Will Robin was 
out rambling along the river, practising that 
merry device of his, of catching shrimps with 
a shot-bag. Without, whatever there was of 
life, by its motionless silence, added to the per- 
fect quiet of the scene. In his stable stood a 
plump, sleek, bay-colored nag, quietly whisking 
his tail ; while a mouse, noiseless as a Pythago- 
rean disciple in the first years of his pupilage, 
was foraging about the edge of the door on a 
few oat-grains that had fallen from an over- 
stocked bin above. A mottled cat, in glossy 
condition, sat couchant upon the half-opened 
stable-door, looking down with an air of sleepy 
indifference upon the careful little plunderer. 
In the door-yard the grass waved slowly, swayed 
by the lazy wind that just buoyed a thistle-down 
in the air, and prevented its falling too swiftly 
to the earth. At a little distance from the 
house might be heard the feeble tinkling of a 
brook, that earned its channel through the hard 



soil by slight but steady labor. The sun was 
just disappearing in the west, and Dr. Nicholas 
Grim sat in his leather-backed arm-chair, in his 
study, with his feet resting upon a stool covered 
with a soft cushion of lamb's wool, indulging in 
the after-dinner revery of a corpulent man. As 
the sun's last ray came in at the window, it cast 
the shadow of the doctor's enormous bulk upon 
the opposite wall, where it assumed a new and 
fantastic appearance every moment, as the an- 
gle at which the sunlight entered the apartment 
varied. Now, his protuberant paunch was 
thrown into bold relief, like the moon thrusting 
its portly front forth from a partial eclipse ; 
now, as one side of the coat was brought into 
the picture, resembling a huge ship of war with 
her fore-sail spread ; now the broad, good-na- 
tured countenance of the doctor was caricatured 
into a lion's head, or again into a long, thin, 
grotesque human face. Dusk crept in, and gave 
new touches to the picture — filling the room 
with odd shadows, and travestying the appear- 
ance and character of every object : a slim, 
wide-lipped vial, casting from the shelf upon 
the floor the likeness of a prim, tall Quaker, 
with a broad-brimmed hat ; a little gallipot as- 
suming upon the wall the counterfeit present- 
ment of an oily Dutchman with a peaked nose, 
while said nose was, or seemed to be, fastened 
upon by the shadowy fingers of a pair of 
tweezers, hung up by a string. In the centre 
of the apartment stood a stout, circular stand, 
from which a number of long-necked bottles, 
filled with medical preparations, towered up, 
surrounded by a swarm of small vials and pill- 
boxes — flanked with a bowl of jelly, near which 
a chubby watch, with a heavy gold chain and 
seals, lay, and indolently ticked the time. In 
another quarter stood an old-fashioned book- 
case, over the top of which a plaster-of-Paris 
Galen and JEsculapius exhibited their dusty 
faces. The windows were hung with heavy 
curtains, and every other appointment of the 
room denoted competency and comfort. Not 
many minutes after the twilight had become 
tinged with the deeper colors of advancing 
night, a tread was heard in the hall — a muffled 
knock at the door : and as Dr. Grim exclaimed, 
" Come in !" the door opened slowly, a large 
man in stout boots, with a round-topped coun- 
try hat, entered, and bowing with a smile, glided 
across the room without any of the noise which 
might be expected to accompany the motion of 
so heavy a body, and silently took his station 
in an extreme corner, with his face turned tow- 
ard Dr. Nicholas. The doctor recognised in 
this mysterious personage one of his own pa- 
tients, and would have taken him Kindly by the 
hand, had he not remembered that he had buried 
him about twelve months before. 

A second muffled knock was heard at the 
door; and a bold-faced man, in green specta- 
cles, another patient of Dr. Grim's, entered, 
crossed the apartment, and look his station 
quietly beside the first. Again the ominous 
sound was repeated, and a man with an oval 



32 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



face joined the others. This third apparition 
left the door standing ajar ; the mysterious, muf- 
fled knock was heard no more ; but there glided 
in, without notice or warning, a stream of some 
dozen or twenty ghost-like personages, in each 
one of whom Dr. Grim, who was rapidly turning 
into a vast petrifaction, discovered some recent 
patient that had been shot down by that fatal 
ball, the Patent Pioneer Pill. Among others, 
he recognised a dapper bank-clerk, who had 
signalized himself by having outlived double 
the number of that celebrated preparation of 
any person on record ; and — horrid spectacle ! — 
John Simple, his late apothecary. What might 
be the purpose of this singular and voluntary 
visit, Dr. Nicholas Grim had not sufficient sa- 
gacity to conjecture. In a short time, however, 
the bank-clerk and the apothecary laid their 
ghostly heads together, and after a few minutes' 
consultation, the bank-clerk drew from his pock- 
et a scroll of paper, and pondered over it about 
a second : the spare apothecary bustled about 
among the shadowy assembly, and, at a nod 
from the bank-clerk, the impudent man in green 
spectacles advanced from the throng. 

" I commend these to thee as fresh !" said the 
impudent man, seizing Dr. Nicholas by the nose 
with one hand, and opening his mouth, and 
thrusting down the contents of a large pill-box 
with the other. The impudent man then ad- 
justed his green spectacles and fell back into 
his place. 

The nod of the bank-clerk was repeated : and a 
personage built like a junk bottle, having a small 
head and long neck, with a stout round body 
and square shoulders, came forward and sub- 
jected the worthy physician to the identical 
operation of the impudent man in green glass- 
es, and retired. 

Next a doughty brewer with an immense fist 
stalked forth, and crushing the pill-box with 
which he was furnished between two fingers, 
he filled his huge palm with its contents, and 
poured them, with an asseveration, down the 
doctor's throat, as if he was using a barley- 
scoop. 

" This must be dry work," said the first ap- 
parition that had entered, the large man in 
stout boots, and drawing from his side coat- 
pocket a bottle of paregoric, he thrust the neck 
into the mouth of Dr. Grim (who began to make 
awful contortions of face), and, giving the bot- 
tle a smart jerk, discharged the whole of the 
fluid into his stomach. 

" I think I'll bag the balls this time !" said 
the fourth operator, who had been a noted bil- 
liard-player, shooting the contents of an enor- 
mous box into the open mouth of Dr. Grim. 

" And I'll charge home !" said a fifth pa- 
tient, formerly an artillery -man, stepping out as 
the billiard-player drew back, placing the con- 
tents of a similar box upon the tongue of the 
inventor of the Patent Pioneer Pill, and forcing 
them with his fingers down the overcharged 
throat of the doctor. 

" What if I throw all the balls at once !" said 



a sixth, the keeper, in his lifetime, of a nine- 
pin alley, and he bowled a handful of pills by 
main force into the distended features of the 
terrified Dr. Grim. 

Then a modest little man came forward, and, 
like the stout countryman, moistened this dry 
provender with a second infusion of fluid from a 
bottle which he produced. 

At length the bank-clerk ceased giving nods, 
thrust his scroll into his pocket, and came for- 
ward himself, his skirts stuffed out to an almost 
horizontal position by the materials that v^-re 
crammed into them. 

" There's nothing like the Pion ?er Pill, Dr. 
Grim !" said he, with a horrid smirk upon his 
countenance, drawing from his pocket another 
of the awful chip boxes, which disappeared in 
a trice between the jaws of Dr. Nicholas : a 
second from the same source soon followed it ; 
a third, a fourth, a fifth. At length, even the 
inexhaustible pockets of the bank-clerk were 
exhausted, and he turned to the apothecary for 
a fresh supply — and that worthy handed over to 
him some dozen boxes more ; the last two or 
three stuck in the throat of the doctor, and the 
bank-clerk was obliged to give him a smart 
punch in the bowels to open his larynx. The 
bank-clerk now, with large drops of sweat on 
his pale brow, drew back, and John Simple ad- 
vanced, with a grave, doctorial air, to take his 
place. 

Baring the arm of Dr. Grim, he took him de- 
liberately by the wrist with thumb and finger, 
and gently feeling his pulse, said, " Dr. Nicho- 
las, you appear to have something of a fever ; 
your face is flushed, too, and there appears to 
be a slight flutter in the region of the heart. I 
am afraid you are suffering from repletion ; — 
have you any nausea ?" To this question Dr. 
Grim involuntarily shook his head, and Mr. 
John Simple proceeded : " I think we had better 
send down a box or two of our Patent Pioneer 
Pills ; perhaps the little apothecary with his 
shovel may remove the obstruction or impu- 
rity." 

There was a gentle laugh among the assem- 
bled apparitions, and the same lively process of 
administering pills was carried into effect as 
the bank-clerk had practised, the latter gentle- 
man taking the position formerly occupied by 
Mr. Simple, and handing out innumerable boxes 
from some invisible reservoir. 

As box after box followed each other rapidly 
into the capacious stomach of Dr. Grim, he 
might have thought, if thought was permitted 
to his awe-stricken mind, " What the devil ! it 
can't be that that rascally apothecary, John 
Simple, is preparing the Patent Pioneer Pill, 
from my recipe in the other place — for ex- 
portation ?" 

Each one of the shadowy party had now ad- 
ministered in turn to the terrified Grim ; and 
yet they seemed to think that the course was 
not quite complete : for, huddling about the 
stand in the centre of the room, each one seized 
upon vial, powder-paper, or long-necked bot- 



THE VISION OF DR. NICHOLAS GRIM. 



33 



tie, and despatched its contents after the drugs 
and fluids that had already travelled down the 
free highway of Dr. Grim's throat. The bowl 
of calves'-feet jelly was, however, quaffed off 
at a draught by the doughty brewer himself. 

The apothecary, casting his eye upon the fat- 
faced watch, exclaimed, " Our time is up !"— 
and, resuming their places, they glided out of 
the apartment in the same order and with the 
same silent tread as they had entered. 

In a few minutes, Foolish Will came in from 
practising his ingenious exploit by the river, 
and advancing cautiously into the study of Dr. 
Grim, he discovered that worthy practitioner 
with his feet spread out upon the floor, his 
hands clinging fast to the arms of his chair, and 
his face going through a series of singular and 
rapid changes, to which the rollicking motion 
of his whole body seemed to lend variety and 
vigor. Will Robin, as might be reasonably 
expected, thought that the doctor was playing 
off his countenance in a sportive way upon 
him ; and unwilling to be outdone in so capital 
a diversion, he drew up a chair directly oppo- 
site Dr. Grim, and planting himself upon its 
edge, placed his hands upon his knees, and 
commenced reciprocating faces with that cor- 
pulent gentleman. 

Some of the doctor's exhibitions were, how- 
ever, so entirely original and astonishing, that 
they put at defiance Will Robin's herculean 
efforts to rival them ; and the doctor rolled his 
eyeballs in a manner so picturesque and ex- 
pressive, as to render every attempt to imitate 
their movements utterly fruitless. To these 
numerous and inimitable divertisements, the 
doctor now began to add certain indescribable 
motions of the hands— waving them in rapid 
curves toward the door — joining them signifi- 
cantly upon his stomach — and again brandish- 
ing both, first toward Will Robin, and then 
toward the hall. As they sat thus contempla- 
ting each other, and as Will began to suspect 
something more than amusement lay at the bot- 
tom of the matter, SoL Clarion entered, with 
his gig-whip in his hand, to greet the doctor, 
and communicate the result of his city visit as 
to certain small messages that had been intrust- 
ed to him by Dr. Grim. As he drew near, he 
discovered that something had gone wrong with 
the doctor in his absence ; and instinctively 
seizing his pulse, and finding it to beat at an 
unusual rate, he begged the doctor to speak. 
But the doctor was silent as a stone. 

" For God's sake !" exclaimed Grace Grim, 
rushing into the room at that moment, from a 
brief conversation with Will Robin in the hall, 
" for God's sake, what is the matter with my 
father ?" 

Dr. Grim smiled upon her faintly, but made 
no answer. He was carried to his bed, and 
there he lay sick for about two weeks, articu- 
lating not a word distinctly during that time, 
but mumbling over, sometimes to himself, some- 
times aloud, broken phrases, from which the 
C 



foregoing narrative was gathered. At the end 
of the time, he died in an apoplectic fit, which 
seized him about midday. The third day after, 
he was buried, and the warm tears of two affec- 
tionate and simple mourners, at least, wet the 
sod upon his grave. 



And yet the world remains, although those 
whom we love and reverence are buried from 
sight, and life must go on in its old courses after 
it has leaped the temporary obstruction — the 
pebble in its channel. 

Obeying this wise, though seemingly selfish 
instinct, some twelve months after the death of 
Dr. Nicholas Grim, two fair beings in the youth 
of life stood up hand in hand, and before them 
a reverend man in sable garments likewise 
stood, and he pronounced before them a solemn 
form of words, and — they were man and wife. 

A week or two after his marriage with Grace 
Grim, Sol. Clarion received the following epis- 
tle by the hand of a country neighbor from the 
city of Peth ; and as he perused it, he thought 
he heard each line ring with the peculiar nasal 
twang of its author : — 

Greenwich, Conn., 

6th Month, 2d Day, 18—. 
Friend Solomon : 

It grieveth me much to communicate by this, 
tidings that thine uncle is deceased. He depart- 
ed this life on first day morning, of a malignant 
fever, as I am informed by Dr. Slanter, who at- 
tended him during his last sickness. His mal- 
ady wrought much change in thine uncle's 
looks, as I can state from personal observance, 
having inspected them with great care imme- 
diately after his lamented decease. The funeral 
takes place third day morning, but too early 
for thee to come up ; thou hadst better not un- 
dertake the journey, as it may overweary thee, 
thou being of a feeble constitution (as I know), 
from a boy. Thine uncle hath left no heir, as 
thou knowest he was never in wedlock ; con- 
sequently thou art his successor in the home- 
stead, and whatsoever cash, moveables, and 
stock, he hath left. I would advise thee to 
plough the meadow behind the house, and to 
sow timothy in the blue grass meadow. The 
garden needs to be looked after, and the fruit- 
trees, as they are at present well-stocked, should 
be thinned out. Perhaps I had better use the 
kitchen herbs and early apples for my own 
family use, until thou comest hither. My spouse 
Deborah says they make exceeding good pies. 
Zekiel can pluck them, and it will be no great 
trouble ; if it be, a small commission will make 
all right between me and thee. Zekiel proposes 
to gather the vegetables and fruit for us in con- 
sideration of thy letting him have a little of the 
live stock ; a pair or two of the fowls, and a 
well-looking calf that is just cast by the spotted 
cow. I regret to add that Gideon Barley's fin 3 
red heifer hath strained her off shoulder, and b . 



34 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



may lose the crittur. I recommended salt and 
water for the animal ; whether Gideon will use 
it yet is not decided. The old people are well 
and ask the stagedriver daily (as I have ob- 
served from the kitchen window) questions con- 
cerning thy welfare. I would bring this news 
to thee in person, and be enabled to satisfy thy 
grandfather and grandmother touching thy prog- 
ress and behavior in the Babylon where thou 
art, but there is much ploughing to be done, and 
I am deprived of Zephaniah's aid, he being sore 
of a foot with a scythe wound. Leonard hath 
gone over to tend the mill for Miller Kirby, and 
Zekiel will be busy running to and fro betwixt 
us and thy garden and orchard. Advising thee 
to keep from the snares that beset the feet of 
youth in the ungodly city, and recommending 
thee to pay thy tailor's bill, and avoid the night 
air : Thine, 

Uriah Bloom. 

It is thought that Doublet, the old-fangled 
tory lawyer, will not last the summer out. I 
have called upon him a score or so of times in a 
neighborly way, and do verily believe that the 
old man hath lost his wits, for he ceases not to 
cry out for one Mand Hamus, a king's counsel 
I judge, from such words as he delivers with the 
name. However on this point I will inform 
thee further in a short time, as I intend to watch 
with him to-night, to see what further hints he 
may drop in his fever, touching this and other 
matters. U. B. 

Happening a short time after this in the 
neighborhood of 9| Bowery, Sol. Clarion's eye 
was attracted by a gorgeous painting, exhibiting 
a great variety of monsters in fanciful colors, 
and observing the words, " Wonderful Wild 
Beast Exhibition," he stepped in and asked for 
the proprietor, Mr. P. Hyaena Patchell. But 
Mr. Patchell came not forth. In answer to his 
inquiry, he learned that the smart showman had 
had his head bitten off by the famous Bengal 
lion, in an attempt to investigate the lungs and 
bronchia of that interesting animal, for the 
amusement of a very pleasant assemblage of 
apprentices, maid servants, children under thir- 
teen at half price, and a musty medical gentle- 
man, who was very curious to learn the physio- 
logical effect of a full grown man's placing his 
cranium within the jaws of a Bengal lion in 
robust health. 

Counsellor Doublet, he ascertained, had bust- 
led about the clerks' offices for a day or two, and 
been laughed at by all the clerks and scriveners 
in the same ; was told the supreme court no 
longer granted the writ of privilege — and re- 
turned to the country and took to his bed. 
By the next mail after that which brought the 
epistle of Friend Bloom, he learned that the little 
lawyer had died over night, demanding a " man- 
damus writ of privilege !" in a voice of author- 
ity ; and threatening an appeal to parliament 
if it were not granted ! 



THE MELANCHOLY VAGABOND. 

It was a clear October morning. The hum 
of the city was just beginning to swell into a 
distinct sound; the sun, like a cheerful face 
smiling from amid doubt and adversity, was 
pushing aside the clouds in the east, and exhib- 
iting his broad, rubicund features in full glow 
and freshness ; sloops, here and there, and other 
trim vessels were starting out from the shore, 
and gliding up or down the river ; and in the 
middle of the stream two men occupied a wea- 
ther-beaten, red fishing-boat, motionless and 
silent. One of them sat in the stern with his 
hands clenched upon his knees, and a wo-begone 
expression of countenance ; and the other occu- 
pied the middle seat with an oar in each hand 
dipping in the water. 

The first had a dry, shrivelled face, was short 
of stature, and was attired in a tattered gray 
overcoat, stretching from chin to heel, with a 
woollen cap, fashioned very much like a night- 
cap, on his head. The second was a round, 
beef-fed personage, built like a duck, with an 
immense bill and corresponding mouth, and 
amply filled every inch of his garments with his 
person. He was clad in a long-tailed clay-col- 
ored coat, mud-colored vest, colorless pair of 
breeches, and dusty hat. 

" Don't you feel any sort of a freshness from 
the morning air, Neddy ?" asked the duck-fea- 
tured gentleman, pulling a stroke or two down 
the river. 

" No, none at all, no how ; there's something 
here, Nosey," laying his right hand upon his 
heart, " a dead sickness I'm afeard that breeze 
nor physicianer can cure !" He then heaved a 
sigh, and joining his hands together again, ex- 
claimed in a still more pathetic voice, " Ah ! 
you knows not, Nosey Bellows, tho' you be's a 
father, what it is to have a ungrateful dau'ter ! 
To have a girl what marries throw herself away 
against her daddy's will." 

"Per'aps we'd better pull for the fishing 
ground, Neddy," said the duck-faced man, " the 
sight of the cheerful porgies comin' up on the 
hook may sort o' revive you, and make you 
forget your suff'rin's. A bit of nature now and 
then is very pleasant to the spirits ! Come," 
concluded the duck-faced man, "we'll try a 
stroke for the island ! — what say you, Neddy 
Budge ?" 

"Neddy Budge can't go, Nosey, no how; 
you'd better pull to shore and land me, for some- 
how or other I always feel more melancholy on 
water. So I'll turn rudder," giving the tiller 
a turn feebly, " and go ashore and take a stroll 
along the banks !" 

"Well, if you will, you wiU !" said Mr. Bel- 
lows, drawing his oars smartly tlirough the 
water, and the red boat shot swiftly toward 
land. In a few minutes they struck the shore, 
Budge j umped out, and Bellows turning again 
scudded down the river, took in another friend 
of his, and pointed prow for Governor's island. 



THE MELANCHOLY VAGABOND. 



35 



The history of Neddy Budge up to this period 
was simply this. He had opened life as a con- 
stable in a fifty-dollar court. From his humble 
position on the floor of a court-room, clearing 
the bar and bawling " to order !" he had, one 
lucky day, by a sudden change of parties and 
favor with political leaders, found his way to 
the justice's seat, and there he presided for 
many years a legal dark -lantern, by whose un- 
certain and wavering light many an unfortunate 
plaintiff or defendant was plunged into a pit of 
costs. Again the wheel of fortune turned. 
Again he handled the marshal's truncheon for 
a time ; but even that simple staff of authority 
was wrested from his hand, and he became an 
idle hanger-on upon the court, without business 
or profit, until the sweeper of the court-room 
died, and then, in consideration of his former 
luminous services on the bench, Neddy Budge 
was inducted into that modest office. He soon 
became a poor devil, and slipping rapidly tlirough 
those nice gradations which are known only 
in low life, he settled into the character in 
which he has appeared before the reader, namely 
that of a vagabond fisherman. 

After Neddy Budge had abandoned Bellows 
and his boat, he directed his steps along the 
shore indulging, as he walked, a melancholy 
vein of thought and meditation. 

" Who'd have thought it," said Neddy, tor- 
turing his face into an expression of refined 
suffering, " a girl as was bro't up so kindly — and 
so well edecated as Nancy — poor Nan !" and a 
small drop of fluid distilled from the eyes of the 
Melancholy Vagabond, " and then to marry sich 
a tripe ! a mere dog-queller." — Here Mr. 
Budge's feelings of indignation became too 
strong for oral expression, and he accordingly 
plucked his woollen cap from his brow and 
crushed and twisted it between his hands, until 
all semblance of its character as an ornament 
for the human head had entirely disappeared. 
" I can't stand it no how any longer," at length 
uttered Neddy Budge, stamping his foot fiercely 
on the ground, " I'll wring his neck off, and 
they may take the law of me ! I don't care no 
how ! — I'll choke him with soot afore he shall 
live with my daughter ! Yes I will !" and the 
evil-minded Budge doubled his fist and shook it 
in the air as if the powerful proposition he had 
just made had been assailed by some invisible 
casuist. Upon the delivery of this emphatic 
threat, Mr. Budge directed his steps with con- 
siderable speed toward the city. He had not 
walked many paces in this direction before he 
resumed his original course with more modera- 
tion, falling again into a strain of dolorous re- 
flection. 

"But I ha'n't the spirit to murder a man, 
though he be a dog-killer, and as helpless and 
feeble as a puppy just whelped. If he'd have 
been a rag-picker, or a horse-doctor, or a mas- 
ter chimley-sweep, or any sort of a thing but a 
dog-killer, Neddy Budge could have stood it. 
But then, he's a despisable murtherer of poor 
curs ! and knocks 'em in the head for the cor- 



poration, a dollar a-piece. I hope Nancy '11 
starve afore she eats bread earned by sich prac 
tices !" 

As he uttered these words, with his eyes cast 
sadly upon the ground, a laughing fellow, with a 
crimson complexion, slapped Neddy Budge heart- 
ily upon the shoulder. 

This worthy was a jolly constable, a former 
companion of Budge's, and always known and 
addressed as " William." And here, kind read- 
er, allow me to drop a pithy apothegm, founded 
on much observation and experience. There is 
a class of persons whose full name is as difficult 
to get at as to discover the longitude, or the 
meaning of a Hebrew commentator. They are 
known simply as Johnson, or Hodges, or Smith ; 
or as John, Bob, Philip, or Dick. Hostlers, 
coachmen, negroes, errand-boys, constables, and 
park-keepers, are generally known in this way. 
They seem to constitute a kind of half-human- 
ity, which is sufficiently honored and recognised 
by a single appellative. Why clergymen are 
put to the inconvenience of christening them 
into full names, is a mystery I could never 
fathom. 

"Good morning, judge !" said the jolly con- 
stable, touching his hat with a mock air of pro- 
found reverence, as Neddy Budge looked up, 
" how does your honor feel this morning !" 

" Miserable, William, miserable. I'm in sich 
low spirits, and have sich a ringing in my head 
I can't hardly live." 

" Why, how is this, Neddy ?" continued the 
jolly constable, " your mind ought to be as light 
as a lark, now ; you've got no cases to try, no 
juries to panel" — 

"You say true, William," interposed the 
Melancholy Vagabond, " but I'm afeard a ju- 
ry '11 be panelled on me afore long that will give 
in a final verdict ; and my case will be tried 
beyond appeals to higher courts!" And the 
Melancholy Vagabond let fall a tear upon his 
coat-sleeve. 

Hereupon the jolly constable looked very sol- 
emn, and said, " Neddy Budge, you didn't use 
to be this way in the old court ; there, Justice 
Budge was as laughing a fellow as ever sat on 
the bench. Don't you recollect," he concluded, 
smiling, and nudging Mr. Budge under the small 
ribs, " the case of Wright vs. Passnips, where 
you threatened one of defendant's witnesses, if 
he didn't stop snivelling in court you'd send 
him up to the dry dock to be new calked !" 
Upon the delivery of this funny reminiscence 
the jolly constable exploded in a horse-laugh, 
which, however, produced only a sickly smile 
upon the countenance of ex-Justice Budge. At 
this, Catchpole was slightly disconcerted, and, 
shaking Neddy hastily by the hand, harried era 
to court, saying he " must take out a fresh sum- 
mons in the case of the huckster woman, who 
always puts her head out of the garret-window, 
saying, she's just gone out of (own !" 

Neddy Budge thereupon seized his woollen 
cap by the top, gave it two or three uneasy 
turns upon his head, settled it with a new part in 



36 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



front, and, plunging both hands in his deep coat- 
pockets, proceeded on his way more thoughtful 
and melancholy than ever. 

The gloom which now pervaded the bosom of 
Mr. Budge, had been gathering over it for more 
than a twelvemonth. It had, at length, become 
insupportable. The poor fellow as he now trav- 
elled along, keeping the river in view, burst 
forth at times with some hfcavy passage of com- 
plaining, or sitting down upon the stump of a 
tree, or a rock, or any chance object, wrung 
his hands and indulged in a copious discharge 
of tears. The man's only and darling daugh- 
ter had married a dog-killer ! Thus Neddy 
Budge rambled about the whole morning, some- 
times keeping upon the road, but oftener strag- 
gling through the fields or along the shore. At 
length he formed a desperate resolve. He had 
reached an old, deserted granary, standing near 
the river, with a door, over which swung a 
rusty iron crane, looking forth upon the water. 
Into this Neddy Budge easily made an entrance. 
For a long time he seemed to be searching 
about the building for some object in vain. At 
length, discovering a stout piece of cord, his ob- 
ject seemed to be attained, and, forming one end 
of the same into a noose, he proceeded calmly 
and thoughtfully into the upper story of the gra- 
nary. Here he threw open the door, drew in the 
crane, and attached to its extremity one end of 
the rope. In a moment the other end was about 
his own neck, he had given the crane an out- 
ward swing, and Neddy Budge hung dangling 
in the air ! 

Nosey Bellows, his companion of the morn- 
ing, had been unsuccessful in his fishing ven- 
ture at Governor's island, and had glided up the 
river, and dropped anchor off the Long island 
shore, opposite the very building from which 
Neddy Budge had just thrown himself. He was 
sitting on the landward side of the boat, with 
his line carelessly dipping in the water, and 
looking over toward the city. The sun was 
sunken low in the west, and brought out the 
object upon which his gaze was now fastened, 
with great distinctness against the sky. 

w As sure as a fish is a water animal," ex- 
claimed the duck-featured gentleman to his 
friend in the boat, " there's a man hanging from 
Astor's old granary by the neck !" 

At this his friend turned, and, looking in the 
direction to which he pointed, replied, " Poh ! 
Nosey, it's nothing but a sack of wheat that 
they're swinging in, or a sheaf of straw !" and, 
looking more earnestly, he seemed to doubt 
something the report of his own vision. 

" Sheaf of straw nor sack of wheat has pas- 
sed that door or hung on that crane this twenty 
year ; never sin' the dead pedler was found 
in the loft. I'm sure its a man, and what's more, 
we'll pull over and cut him down ; there may be 
some snuff o' life in him yet." 

Instantly they took in their lines and anchor, 
and, each seizing an oar, they pulled with main 
and might straight across the river. As they 
drew nearer, Bellows, observing the long gray 



overcoat, exclaimed, " It's Neddy Budge, as I 
live !" and he threw greater strength into every 
stroke. They soon landed, and both ran at full 
speed toward the old granary. In a moment 
they drew in the crane, but, finding him 
stone-cold, the duck-featured gentleman re- 
marked, with considerable trepidation in his 
accent, that " It wouldn't do to cut him down 
till the crowner came. It was agin the law ! — 
So I've heard poor Neddy himself say many a 
time !" 

Nosey Bellows soon despatched his friend in 
quest of that functionary, and, allowing the body 
of Neddy Budge to swing back to its original 
position, he descended below stairs and stood 
underneath the crane looking up, with singular 
expression of visnomy, into the shrivelled face 
of his deceased friend. He was there joined 
by a second party, namely, the jolly constable, 
who had come that way to try the inaccessible 
huckster (who lived near by) with a " fresh 
summons." 

They now observed, for the first time togeth- 
er, that Neddy Budge held his woollen cap in 
his hand, which was extended forward as if in 
the act of tossing it from him, when it was 
arrested by the death-pang. The philosophy of 
neither could solve this mysterious position of 
the dexter arm, and there they stood wonder- 
ing till the coroner arrived. He very speedily, 
with the aid of the constable, summoned a 
jury from the neighborhood ; who, hearing the 
testimony of Nosey Bellows and jolly William, 
as to his morning's conversation with each of 
them, rendered the verdict, "died of his own 
act, in consequence of melancholy and depres- 
sion of spirits." The jolly constable thereupon 
departed in search of the ingenious huckster ; 
the body of Neddy Budge was lifted into the 
red fishing-boat, and Nosey Bellows and his 
friend rowed sorrowfully down the stream. The 
next day the Melancholy Vagabond was buried. 



THE MERRY-MAKERS. 
PLOIT NO. I. 



-EX- 



THE MERRY-MAKERS IN QUEST OF A DINNER J 
AND THE COSTUME IN WHICH THEV INTRO- 
DUCED THEMSELVES TO CHICKEN PIE AND 
CIDER. 

Everywhere, all over the face of the earth, 
are scattered, like dimples, crews and compa- 
nies of droll fellows, to keep the world in hu- 
mor, and preserve the arts of laughter and 
frolic from total oblivion. Here and there, 
some two or three of them will obtain a foot- 
hold, and, practising their mad pranks, and ut- 
tering their witty sayings, make whole counties 
and townships ring with the echo. These are 
your wild blades, roaring boys, with something 
of the goosecap, something of the swaggerer in 
their composition, whose exploits are part of 



THE MERRY-MAKERS.— EXPLOIT NO. I. 



37 



ine history, and their mirthful speeches part of 
the vernacular of country villages and neigh- 
borhoods. In the chronicles and traditions of 
such places, they fill the posts of Robin Hoods 
and court-jesters ; every old woman in a cap 
takes their fame into keeping, and it is handed 
down from chimney corner to chimney corner, 
sometimes even as far as the third generation ! 
God bless the jovial tribe ! for they have saved 
many a good face from becoming mouldy and 
wrinkled, and sent a cheerful ray down into 
many a fine heart that would otherwise have 
become dull and torpid. 

Some thirty miles from the good city of New 
York, a pleasant road winds through the bosom 
of a cheerful range of low hills, covered all the 
way with rich woods and pasture-lands. In the 
very heart of these hills stood a dilapidated and 
ancient out-house, in which were assembled, 
early on a clear midsummer morning, some six 
or eight laughing fellows, shabbily dressed, and 
engaged in earnest conversation. 

" Well, my lads !" said one of them, a good- 
sized man, in a hawk nose, " I think we had 
better forego the project of tapping uncle 
Aaron's cider-barrels to-day. The liquor will 
be better a month or two hence. I have a bet- 
ter game to propose, that I think you'll like to 
have a hand in." 

" What is it, Bobbylink ?— let us have it," 
was the general acclamation and question of 
the party, as they gathered eagerly about the 
speaker. 

"As many as would as leave as not have 
clean rigging and a hot dinner to-day, will 
please to not keep their mouths shut !" and a 
universal " Amen !" burst from the throats of 
the persons assembled. 

" If so," continued the speaker, who seemed 
to be master of the revels, " report yourselves 
and your condition as I call your names." 

Saying this, he drew a dirty piece of paper 
from his hat, and called " Habbakkuk Viol." 

" Here : breeches open as Deacon Barker's 
mouth when he's praying ; coat with tails fight- 
ing agin each other, and suing for separation ; 
shirt turned into ribands, and gone into boots 
which are on a visit to the cobbler's ; belly in a 
state of insurrection." 

" John Smally." 

" On the spot, sir, and has a faint recollec- 
tion of a breakfast he eat 'bout a month ago ; 
believes there was such a meal as dinner once 
in vogue in these parts. Garments similar- 
like to Mr. Viol's." 

" Sam Chisel." 

" Your sarvant !" said a stout-built fellow, 
with a slight hump on his shoulders, throwing 
& somerset and lighting in front of Mr. Bobby- 
link with a solemn expression of face. " Has 
attended three house-raisin's, two weddin's, and 
one chrisicnin' ; come off with a dry belly from 
all six. For why ? One man fell down dead 
with an opoplexy, the furst mug of cider he 
BWallered ; 'cordinglr, the barrels was all 
! , for fear of fudder accidents. The oth- 
3 



er two raisin's was on tne rock crystal, cold 
water plan : the baby at the christenin' was too 
small herself for to eat, 'cordingly they giv' 
nothin' out. The two weddin's was over when 
I got there — 'cause why ? 'Bak. Viol told me 
the wrong hour." 

" That will do, Mr. Chisel," said the good- 
sized man ; " fall in with Smally there, and 
save your stories for next twenty-first of June. 

" Harry Harvest." 

" Overcoat in good condition. Hat, coat, 
breeches, and breakfast, missing." 

After these, one or two other very similar per- 
sonages gave corresponding responses, and the 
roll-call was completed. 

" Follow me, my lads !" said Mr. Bobbylink, 
taking up the line of march toward a crum- 
bling, old-fashioned building, of which the out- 
house was an appurtenance. The edifice which 
they now approached had been unoccupied and 
gradually falling into decay for several years. 
The owner of the lands on which it stood had 
erected a new tenement on a different part of 
his farm, and abandoned this to bats and owls, 
and such companions of owls as Mr. Bobbylink 
and his club of wild fellows. 

There was a part of the building, however, 
into which even these dare-devils were afraid 
to intrude, and that was an upper chamber 
which was said to be tenanted by the ghost of 
a Jew who had died there at the close of the 
last century. In that room it was currently ru- 
mored that the spirit of the Hebrew kept bache- 
lor's chambers in a very ghostly manner — ta- 
king his meals, clinking and counting his silver, 
and retiring to bed, with all the regularity of a 
gentleman in the flesh. To confirm this state 
of things, Mr. Sam Chisel said that he had seen 
a man in a thin face and Roman nose stand at 
the window several times " atween daylight and 
dark, his hand stroking a dry tuft of whisker, 
like a goat." And Habbakkuk Viol asserted, 
on his own personal hopes of salvation, that he 
had heard a graveyard-voice distinctly enunci- 
ate, when Joshua Jolton, Esquire, was ringing 
his barrow shoats, " Dem those shwine !" Into 
this chamber, notwithstanding the terrors which 
guarded it, Bob Bobbylink now boldly advanced, 
followed by Smally, Chisel, Viol, and their com* 
patriots, in a state of considerable trepidation 
and paleness. 

" Yesterday afternoon," said Bob Bobbylink, 
in explanation of this sudden intrusion into the 
haunted apartment, " I was crossing the open 
garret in search of an old firelock : all at once 
the casement of the north window rattled, one 
of the window-frames fell out, and a gust came 
roaring through the building — swept my hat 
from my head — the little Jew's door burst open, 
through rolled my hat, and I stood shivering, 
bareheaded, in the wind. In a trice, however, 
I was filled with huge promptings of valor and 
adventure, and pushed forward toward the little 
Jew's bed-chamber. I found nothing but an 
old hi^h-backed chair, a bedstead witli the cords 
mouldering to pieces, and this black clot lies- 



33 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



press standing against the wall. The little 
Jew had quit the premises, and as I was the 
first one to make a voyage into these unknown 
parts, I claim a right in all that is found, as 
first discoverer. I searched diligently, my good 
fellows, every nook and cranny of the room, for 
cash and hard silver, and, to my utter astonish- 
ment, found not a farthing. Nevertheless, I have 
fallen upon something, that, if it be well man- 
aged, will purchase a prime dinner for us for 
to-day, at least." At the conclusion of this 
brief narrative, Mr. Bobbylink advanced to the 
clothes-press, turned a rusty key in the lock, 
and the doors flew open, and disclosed to the 
staring eyes of the party a great number of cu- 
rious dresses, carefully folded up and laid in 
order on the shelves, interlarded here and there 
with old-fashioned swords, matchlocks, and 
pistols. 

" I don't see how a dinner is to come out of 
this," said Habbakkuk Viol, after gazing upon 
the apparel a reasonable length of time, " un- 
less, Bob, you propose to feed us, like ostriches, 
on rags and iron. Jack Smally here has a 
stomach, I doubt not, that would digest one of 
those antediluvian matchlocks for a breakfast, 
and despatch a pair of those odd-looking pistols 
between meals. Otherwise, I see no meal nor 
mutton in a case of old clothes." 

" Poh !" retorted Bobbylink, with an air of 
hearty disdain, " Viol, you see nothing but that 
which is plainly before your eyes ; yea, and it 
must come somewhat in contact with your nose 
before you can thoroughly smell out its mean- 
ing." 

"I agree with Viol," interposed Mr. John 
Smally ; " I see no purpose to which you can 
put these fantastic dresses, unless it be to ped- 
dle them at the weaver's, a penny a pound, and 
the works on the firearms for old iron, a penny 
and a half." 

" You are a pretty fellow, Johnny Smally," 
replied Bob Bobbylink, with an air of still great- 
er superiority than he had adopted toward Viol, 
" a pretty fellow, indeed, to tell what use may 
be made of these instruments. Your conceits, 
Smally, are parcel of your brain — patchwork 
and rusty. Your skull is quilted with the very 
odds and ends of your grandmother's rag-box, 
—•stuffed, like an old saddle, with tow and 
feathers — " 

Mr. Bobbylink would have prolonged his rep- 
rimand, had he not at this moment cast his eye 
upon John Smally, who hung his head, played 
with the fragment of a jacket-button, and ex- 
hibited other indisputable signs of penitence and 
contrition. 

Now it should be understood that the shirt- 
less Smally was the factotum, humble servant 
and parasite of Robert Bobbylink ; that he had 
discovered, at a very early period of life, that 
Mr. Bobbylink possessed the finest pair of 
skirts of any gentleman of his acquaintance , 
that he had attached himself to said skirts very 
shortly after such discovery, and had clung to 
the same up to the present period, with che te- 



nacity of a genuine mastiff. He accordingly 
made it his special business to circulate Mr. 
Bobbylink's jocose sayings far andAvide ; to re- 
peat his stories, with the prefix, " Mr. Bobby- 
link said," at all the convenient inns and public 
places within a dozen miles' walk ; and to per- 
form similar other small duties which a vassal 
should of right render unto his liege lord. He 
was Bob Bobbylink's humble shadow. If Bob 
expanded into importance, Mr. Smally felt it 
his duty to dilate in a corresponding manner; 
if Mr. Bobbylink at any time, from the force of 
circumstances, or detection in some prank or 
project, was made to look dwarfish, John Smally, 
according to the charter by which he lived, was 
forced to look as small as a grasshopper. From 
all these causes, a rebuke from Mr. Bobbylink 
was no less than a thunder-clap to the ears of 
Mr. Smally, and he was profoundly hushed and 
silent until it rumbled by ; though he had wit 
at will against any other antagonist than his 
patron. 

" Gentlemen and good fellows," continued Bob 
Bobbylink, " east of this building, about five 
miles, a wedding takes place this morning ; the 
wedding-dinner will be on the table at one 
o'clock, precisely. I propose that we eat that 
dinner. We shall entitle ourselves to the 
poultry, vegetables, boiled tongue, and apple- 
sauce, which will figure there, by right of a 
device that I will open to you, if you will be 
quiet just three minutes and a quarter." At 
this passage of his address, a solemn tranquil- 
lity rested over the apartment. " I have exam- 
ined this wardrobe carefully, aud with an eye 
to our project. I find a suit of the little Jew's, 
including the tall blue cap and long blue coat 
in which he was so well known in these parts ; 
that I shall don myself: a ghost may do some- 
thing for flesh and blood sometimes. Here also 
is the dress of a Hessian horseman ; and as old 
aunt Anderson (who says she lost an ear by a 
trooper's blade during the old war) will be at 
the wedding, she will undoubtedly aid us a lit- 
tle with her owl's voice when we appear. 
Habbakkuk, you have something of a ruffian 
trooper's air ; may you not browbeat a passage 
to a dinner with the butt-end of this blunder- 
buss ?" producing a rusty article of that descrip- 
tion from a drawer of the clothes-press. " Let 
the others," he concluded, " fall in our rear, 
properly caparisoned, and all is safe. If clowns 
and boors can withstand the ghost of a Jew, 
and the blunderbuss of a mad Hessian, there is 
more sustenance in beans and buttermilk than 
I have dreamed of !" 

The old building echoed with a hearty shout 
as Bob Bobbylink ended, and, under his direc- 
tion, they speedly doffed their ragged dresses, 
and set about accoutering themselves in the 
new equipments thus aptly and unexpectedly 
furnished. The articles forming an entire and 
complete suit, were luckily found carefully 
pinned together, and this rendered the task com- 
paratively easy and brief. Besides mere gar- 
ments, they discovered wigs, boots, firearms. 



THE MERRY-MAKERS.— EXPLOIT NO. I. 



39 



swords, guns, &c, all of which might be ren- 
dered of service in the approaching exploit. 

" While I was rumaging a private corner of 
the press," said Bobbylink, as he produced the 
habiliments, " I fell upon a history of the queer 
little Jew, written by his own hand, in a parch- 
ment-book, from which it appears that he was 
originally an old-clothesman in England ; after 
a while, like a grub, he turned from that calling 
into an anti'kary and dress-fancier, which, you 
see, is only a better sort of an old-clothesman. 
Following up this sort of a profession, he gath- 
ered wherever he travelled the rarest and most 
curious kinds of dress and armor — guns, car- 
bines, muskets, and dragons, as he calls 'em. 
He says, at one time he was accused of having 
stolen a couple of dresses from a nobleman's 
collection ; but this he stoutly denies, in the 
name of Father Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. Fi- 
nally, he came over to this country about the 
year seventeen thirty-five ; lived in the city a 
great many years ; and at last came out to these 
parts during the revolutionary war, and added 
a little to his wardrobe ; — there his parchment- 
book breaks off: and I conclude about the year 
eighteen hundred he turned from a dress-fancier 
into a ghost." 

In the course of two or three hours the party 
was completely apparelled, and defiled from the 
old bed-chamber in the following order : First, 
Mr. Robert Bobbylink gravely stalked forth in 
the guise of the defunct Israelite, which con- 
sisted of the tall blue cap and long blue coat 
already mentioned, the latter being ornamented 
with hieroglyphic buttons ; beneath it a rich 
white silk vest, with gay figures and devices ; 
black pantaloons, which, from their brevity, 
seemed to exhibit a reluctance to join a pair of 
low shoes, surmounted by two lively buckles of 
brass. In his hand Mr. Bobbylink bore a ma- 
ple cane, the property and customary travelling 
companion of the deceased gentleman whom he 
represented. It was with intense difficulty that 
Bob Bobbylink forced himself into these gar- 
ments, which were about three sizes too small 
for his person ; and he was obliged to chalk his 
face freely, to take down the color, and give it 
something of the paleness which is proper and 
decent for a ghost. 

Next to him, in order, marched Habbakkuk 
Viol, wearing upon his brow a ferocious helmet 
of jacked leather, guarded by rusty steel hoops ; 
on his broad-shouldered back he bore a long- 
waisted fiery red coat, with fierce metal buttons ; 
his nether limbs were snugly encased in chamois 
leather breeches, of an indescribable complex- 
ion, the lower extremities of which disappeared 
in a couple of hea\y boots, enlivened at the rear 
with a pair of jingling iron spurs. Over his 
breast, in a leatlern belt, an open-mouthed 
blunderbuss swun,',;, sustained at one end by his 
right-hand, at its . mzzle by his left. 

Behind him slovly and thoughtfully waddled 
along the redoubted John Smally ; clad in a 
broad-skirted IVch coat, with awful cuffs ; 
legs buried in trui. k hose, which swelled above 



and beneath the knee into separate inflations, 
ending in peaked shoes that cut the ground like 
scythes; upon his head sat a jaunty cocked- 
hat, from beneath which a brown queue stream- 
ed like the tail of a kite or a comet. In his 
hand he sustained (terrible anachronism!) a 
dragon pistol, as old as the age of Elizabeth — 
an old-fashioned weapon, with a long handle, 
its works in the centre, and the ornament of a 
dragon's head at its muzzle. Having three dres- 
ses underneath his outer one, Mr. Smally moved 
with great solemnity and slowness, and indulged, 
at times, in singular expressions of viznomy, and 
strange gesticulations of the body. 

Treading close upon the heels of Smally, came 
Sam. Chisel. How can I (unless in truth in- 
spired) describe the jovial figure that now 
sidled through the chamber door ? Stuffed mon- 
ster ! elephant in broadcloth ! balloon that hast 
taken two taper legs, dancing inflated on the 
earth ! Mr. Samuel Chisel was endued, on the 
present occasion, in the habiliments of a famous 
clown, who had cast his clothes in the city of 
New York, during the war ; thrown aside his 
cap and bauble, and, in fine, sold out his ward- 
robe to the little Jew antiquary. Upon his brow, 
then, Sam. Chisel wore a singularly construct- 
ed hat, having a towering steeple of felt for its 
centre, with a small, white feather peeping 
from its points, and two flaming angles of paint- 
ed paste-board for its sides. The steeple was 
garnished with innumerable glittering spangles, 
and yards of gold cord coiling about to its very 
spire, and from one angle hung a silken tassel 
of considerable size, in peril, every moment, of be- 
ing devoured by a monstrous painted lion, ram- 
pant on the neighboring pasteboard corner, with 
his mouth agape. Around the base of this triple 
hat a lively belt was fastened by an immense pew- 
ter buckle ; and from beneath the whole a red wig 
depended, under cover of a linen bag, which was 
adorned with a portentous purple rose, or swing- 
ing cabbage-plant. The hump of Mr. Chisel re- 
posed beneath a brilliant green jacket, adorned 
down its whole front by vast wooden buttons, 
painted white, which held it closely fastened to 
the breast. This was stuffed out to portly di- 
mensions by the aid of three goodly sheaves of 
straw, that had been stowed into their place by 
the united strength of Viol, Bobbylink, and Har- 
vest. The same favor had been likewise con- 
ferred on a pair of black silk breeches, whose 
extremities, however, tapered off so unexpect- 
edly at the bottom, as to make it seem that Mr. 
Chisel had lost the best part of his legs in some 
hot engagement, and was walking upon seg- 
ments or slices of the same. Nevertheless, im- 
mense buckles denoted the place where knees 
should have been, and a huge pair of jack boots, 
that threatened to swallow Mr. Chisel's whole 
person, monstrous as it was, were the only pos- 
itive evidences of such members that could be 
discovered. In the neighborhood of the kftee- 
buckles, long knots of yellow riband curled 
about his person, like a nest of playful garter- 
snakes, and at the heels of the huge jack-boots, 



40 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



two spurs, with rowels somewhat less than 
small coach-wheels, thrust themselves forth. 
Under his right arm the valiant Chisel sus- 
tained an awful two-handed sword (fabricated 
of lath and painted the color of steel), with a 
green grip ; and at his left side a gaping scab- 
hard of calf-skin dangled as he walked. 

After Mr. Chisel, at an humble distance, and 
bearing about the same relation to him as a 
lean, starveling sexton, following at the heels 
of a round-bellied, well-kept rector, came a 
withered little man, christened Tommy Snipe, 
by his parents, but rebaptized by the vulgar, 
Dried Snipe. This gentleman possessed a pa- 
per face, with a thin nose, that very unjustly 
inclined to the right ear, and a person which 
might be reasonably expected to correspond 
with such promising upper-features. He took 
upon himself the task and burden of persona- 
ting the age of George II. ; wearing a dark 
brown pigtail, a wide-skirted coat, reaching to 
the knees, with ruffles at the wrist ; a long vest 
with large pocket-flaps underneath, and snug 
pantaloons ending in pumps, adorned with knots 
of riband. But he was sadly out in his costume, 
by mounting on his head a sugar-loaf hat, and 
bearing in his hand a clumsy old pistol, managed 
by a wheel-lock, with its works all at the muz- 
zle, like the brains of a garrulous fellow, all in 
his tongue. I doubt whether the throats of those 
old iron orators ever spoke to much purpose. 
Into one of his coat-pockets he slyly insinuated 
a half-filled powder-flask and shot-pouch, for the 
purpose, perhaps, of practising with his resus- 
citated pistol, upon a few of Mr. Joshua Jolton's 
tame pigeons on the way home, if the adven- 
ture should chance to miscarry. 

Behind Mr. Snipe, Harry Harvest strutted the 
ambitious representative of a still earlier reign. 
His head was covered with a low, broad-brim- 
med beaver, cocked on one side, one corner of 
which had been knocked out by a roundhead 
broadsword, with a dull, dirty feather winding 
about its crown. The expressive countenance 
of Mr. Harvest shone out from amid a fertile 
perriwig that flowed in a complete torrent of 
hair down his shoulders, like the man in the 
moon in a cloudy night. In his left hand he 
wore a smart sword, crossing a gay doublet, 
reaching to the top of a pair of wide stockings, 
tagged up with points : a set of petticoat 
breeches, and a few yards of lutestring, com- 
pleted the dress. 

Thus accoutred, they glided noiselessly from 
the old building, and stole around a ledge of 
rocks, into a green lane, which was shaded by 
trees and straggled along the margin of a brook 
for something like a furlong. Here the pleas- 
ant by-way ended, and they found themselves 
in the edge of an oak woods, pursuing an ob- 
scure footpath, which sometimes broadened into 
an open space, and again narrowed to a track 
scarcely sufficient for the passage of Mr. Samuel 
Chisel. 

As they travelled, the journey was lightened 
by occasional extravagantly authentic stories, 



narrated to the worthy just named, by Bob Bob- 
bylink — interspersed now and then, with a 
rough cudgel-play of wits between Dried Snipe 
and Hank Harvest ; enlivened still more at in- 
tervals, by a series of mutual tricks, practised 
upon each other all round. At times Habbak- 
kuk Viol, the mad Hessian, would discover as 
he stooped to drink of some passing stream, an 
ominous goose-quill stuck in his jacked leather 
helmet, vying with his more regular trooper's 
feather. Again a rapid series of sudden and 
invisible kicks would descend upon the swell- 
ing flank of Sam. Chisel, with such velocity and 
fury, as to shake his physical commonwealth to 
its centre. Dried Snipe being a tetchy little 
fellow, was frequently set upon and sorely bad- 
gered by some one of the party. 

" I think," said the gentleman who represent- 
ed the seventeenth century on this occasion, 
addressing himself to Tommy Snipe, " when I 
undertook to rob a henroost, I wouldn't mistake 
a patriarchal cock, for a maiden pullet ; you are 
so valiant, Snipe, you should have known hiru 
by his spurs !" 

" I knows what I know," retorted Mr. Snipe. 
" If it had been you, I might have known you to 
be a tender bird by your soft coxcomb !" 

" Well answered, Dried Snipe !" quoth the 
company halting in a cleared space, and gather- 
ing about the disputants (Bobbylink advancing 
alone on a lookout). Quip and reply now rap- 
idly passed between the contending parties, 
until at length the tetchy Mr. Snipe was exas- 
perated beyond endurance, by Harry Harvest's 
alluding to his features, in connexion with the 
appearance presented by the physiognomy of a 
dried codfish suddenly animated. At this un- 
savory and pointed insinuation the gentleman 
representing the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, in his style of dress, grew exceeding wroth, 
and would have done terrible damage to the 
person and habiliments of him of the seven- 
teenth, by drawing from his pocket his small 
powder-flask, and proceeding to load his vener- 
able pistol, had not fate interposed, and by the 
hand of John Smally, forcibly plucked the 
brown wig from the head of the valorous Snipe : 
whereupon his sugar-loaf hat slid over his face, 
very much like an enormous extinguisher. In 
this tomb his valor was effectually buried for 
the present. Meantime Mr. Harry Harvest had 
drawn his trusty rapier, but was prevented 
from a very dexterous employment of the same, 
by the sudden descent of Sam. Chisel's trenchant 
blade of lath upon his head, which caused his 
eyes to emit sufficient sparks and flashes, to fire 
a whole field of artillery. 

And now the gentlemen of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries were completely at the 
mercy of their more modern comrades, and 
might have been speedily put to death by the 
numerous ingenious tortures practised upon 
them, while thus doing penance in the dark, 
had not Bob Bobbylink at that moment return- 
ed, exclaiming, with sparkling eyes, " the sig- 
nal is hove out !" which being readily under- 






THE MERRY-MAKERS.— EXPLOIT NO. I. 



41 



Stood by the party, caused a supple adjustment 
of all difficulties, a general and generous for- 
giveness of injuries, and they resumed the 
march. 

In a moment or two they had emerged from 
the woods, and casting their eyes toward the 
east, discovered a long stripe of red flannel fly- 
ing at the head of a well-pole. The sight of 
this signal inspired the freebooting varlets with 
feelings similar to those which filled the breast 
of the adventurous Vasco de Gama, on obtain- 
ing the first view of the Pacific from a peak of 
the Andes ; for to Viol, Bobbylink, & Co., it 
opened visions of whole seas of cider, and 
mountains of mutton and roast beef. They had 
now arrived in an orchard in the rear of the 
dwelling, whose roof covered the wedding-din- 
ner, which was the grand object of their adven- 
ture, and the wedding-party had just seated 
themselves at the table to do justice to its va- 
rious excellence. While the dinner-hunters are 
discussing the most expedient order of entrance 
and assault, we will appropriate a few words 
of description to the objects we have mentioned. 

At the head of a long table, then, in a com- 
fortable sitting-room, looking out upon a garden, 
was seated a round-faced, short man, in a new 
brown coat, with light brass buttons, and at his 
side, a red-cheeked, dumpy girl, in a new pink 
frock, and a pair of blue eyes, in capital order. 
At the opposite extremity of the board sat two 
aged females, old Aunt Anderson, the grand- 
mother of the bridegroom, and at her left, Aunt 
Frewell Tomkins, the corresponding relative 
of the bride. Along the sides of the table were 
seated Parson Hob, a Methodist clergyman, in 
an ill-cut suit of black, in the centre, with the 
mothers of the bride and groom, and two or 
three rustic female cousins, as wings ; opposite 
the preacher sat the bride and bridegroom's 
grandfathers, flanked in like manner on each 
side with the male parents of the interesting 
couple, whose individual interests had been 
merged in a co-partnership for life, with a like 
number of male cousins to tally with the fe- 
males mentioned. This interesting company 
had just arranged itself, as we have described, 
about a well-filled board, when a loud knock 
was heard at the door, and, without further 
warning, a man with an iron-bound military 
cap on his head, and a heavy blunderbuss in 
his hand, stepped into the apartment. 

He grounded his arms with a martial air, 
aud, leaning over the muzzle, looked around 
upon the wedding-party with great coolness and 
severity of countenance. The first one to speak 
on the appearance of this unexpected figure 
was Aunt Anderson. " My God !" said she, 
" I believe it's a Hessian !" and suddenly seiz- 
ing her spectacles from the table and placing 
them to her eyes, she shrieked, " It is ! yes, it 
is one of those wild war-fellows of the revolu- 
tion !" and dropping her glasses upon the floor, 
she rushed precipitately out of the room. 

By this time, a second figure had made itself 
visible. This was a pale, sepulchral person- 



age, in a blue cap and coat, who tottered feebly 
into the apartment with a cane in his hand, and 
took his station a little in advance of the milita- 
ry apparition. " Good gracious !" now shrieked 
Hetty Steddle, a pretty servant-girl, who was in 
waiting, " Lor' bless me, if that ben't the ghost 
of old Shekkels !" and with a hideous noise she 
followed the example of withered Aunt Ander- 
son. " It must be the spirit of the old Jew 
Shekkels !" said the two old grandfathers al- 
most in the same breath, rising from the table, 
placing their hands upon the cloth, and peering 
anxiously forward into the face of the man in 
the blue coat and cap. A general panic had 
now seized the company ; the dumpy bride suc- 
ceeded, after two or three ineffectual attempts, 
in fainting, and was borne in the arms of the 
short man in the round face, aided by two or 
three stout boors, into the fresh air. The cler- 
gyman had taken advantage of the open door, 
and suddenly disappeared, none could tell (if 
they cared) whither. The females in a body fled 
the haunted table, followed by the bridegroom's 
father between the two venerable grandsires, 
dragging them out by the collar with main 
force. Just as the last one of this fugitive 
party of weddeners had vanished through one 
door, their places were supplied at another by 
our friends Sam Chisel, Harvest, Snipe, and 
Smally, who were equally disposed, with them, 
to do justice to the yet untasted meal before 
them. First, the Merry-makers then indulged 
in a sort of subdued horse-laugh all round. 
Next, the door was secured by John Smally and 
Sam Chisel with two short bayonets thrust an 
inch deep or more in the lintels ; and then they 
arrayed themselves with all despatch about the 
smoking board. 

According to an ancient custom that prevails 
in that region, the wedding-company had es- 
tablished themselves at the table before the 
knives and forks were laid at the plates : that 
being a service generally rendered by a negro 
or maid-servant immediately after grace. Our 
bold adventurers accordingly found themselves 
sadly at a stand for lack of these indispensa- 
bles : all except Mr. Harry Harvest, who plied 
his rapier, of the middle of the seventeeth cen- 
tury, with great dexterity at the ribs of a roast- 
ed turkey, and Mr. Chisel, whose lath-sword 
did serviceable execution upon pudding and 
apple-sauce — shovelling huge streams of the 
latter down his throat, seasoned with draughts 
from a neighboring cider-pitcher. But the ex- 
ploits of these two trenchermen scarcely satis- 
fied the clamorous bellies of Dried Snipe, Smally, 
Habakkuk Viol, and Bob Bobbylink. 

The latter worthy, therefore, risinir, and catch- 
ing a brace of fine broiled woodcocks by the 
legs, and thrusting them into his coat-pocket, ex- 
claimed, " Clear the deck, my lads ! — we'll ad- 
journ the dinner to head-quarters !" And saying 
this, he seized upon two bottles of currant-wine 
and a fat fowl, and thrust them into a Ion- bag 
that he had secretly brought with him, to show 
them what lie meant. 



42 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



Thereupon a scene of awful and indiscrimi- 
nate pillage ensued. Habakkuk Viol first filled 
his blunderbuss with, cider to the muzzle, plug- 
ging it in with a roll of hot bread, and after- 
ward stuffed a duck into either pocket. Sam 
Chisel next cast out two sheaves of straw from 
his bosom, aad basted his green jacket with a 
monstrous chicken pie, a dish of apple-sauce, 
and a leaden-covered pitcher of fresh-brewed 
ale ; filling the steeple of his hat with hot rolls 
and other dainties, his jack-boots with radishes 
and roasted apples, and his calf-skin scabbard 
with pudding-sauce and drawn butter. An 
enormous turkey was severed and shared with 
Dried Snipe, who, besides this moiety, lined his 
gaberdine with bread and cakes, and clapped a 
blackberry pudding in his sugar-loaf hat, with a 
small plate at bottom to sustain it. The im- 
mense vest-pockets of John Smally were forth- 
with freighted each with a comely loaf of pot- 
cheese, and into the skirts of his Dutch coat he 
slid a goodly tongue, whispering to Bobbylink, 
" This, you and I will secretly divide !" As for 
Harry Harvest, he was desperately fond of 
greens, and took charge of the vegetable depart- 
ment ; and accordingly crammed his Charles Sec- 
ond doublet and petticoat-breeches between the 
lining with beans, peas, asparagus, and ears of 
early corn. Thus armed and provisioned, these 
gallant cruisers cautiously undid the door, and 
stole warily from harbor without being seen ; 
for the whole wedding-party had fled into the 
crib, which was on the other side of the house, 
and there they kept themselves in a state of 
siege — the short bridegroom having ascended 
into the loft of the same, and planted his round 
face at a loophole in the end, maintaining a 
brilliant and steady lookout, with all his eyes, 
toward the front of the building. 

The Merry-makers soon attained the woods, 
and Bob Bobbylink, looking cautiously back, 
saw the pretty serving-girl, Hetty Steddle, 
standing under a cow-shed in the road, holding 
her hips, and ready to burst with laughter, as 
she gayly winked and waved her hand to him. 

The next morning, the same shabbily-dressed 
crew to which we introduced our readers might 
have been seen lurking about the old out -house, 
basking in the sun as before, but with improved 
visages, sleek with the fruits of their yester- 
day's adventure. 



THE GREAT CHARTER CON- 
TEST IN GOTHAM. 

ILLUSTRATING THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PAT- 
RIOTISM AND SILK STOCKINGS, AND CACOGRA- 
PHY AND POPULAR RIGHTS. 

There is a particular season of the year in 
the city of New York, when ragamuffins and 
vagabonds take a sudden rise in respectability ; 
when a tarpaulin hat is viewed with the same 



mysterious regard as the crown of an emperor, 
and the uncombed locks of a wharf-rat or river- 
vagrant looked upon with as much veneration 
as if they belonged to Apollo in his brightest 
moments of inspiration. At this singular and 
peculiar period in the calendar, all the higher 
classes, by a wonderful readiness and felicity 
of condescension, step down from their pedes- 
tals, and smilingly meet the vulgar gentry, half 
way up, in their progress to the beautiful table- 
land of refinement and civilization. 

About this time gloves go out of repute, and 
an astonishing shaking of dirty fists takes place 
all over the metropolis. It is a sight to electrify 
the heart of a philanthropist, to behold a whole 
community in a state of such perfect Arcadian 
innocence, that all meet on terms of familiar 
affection, where smile responds to smile, with 
equal warmth — though one may dimple a clean 
countenance, and the other force its pellucid 
way through a fog of earthy particles. Happy, 
golden time ! 

Reader, if you chance not to comprehend 
philosophically this sweet condition of things, 
be informed that a charter election comes on 
next month ! 

The charter contest of the year eighteen hun- 
dred and , is perhaps the fiercest on rec- 
ord in the chronicles of New York. Several 
minor skirmishes took place with regard to al- 
dermen, assessors, and constables ; but the main 
brunt and heat of the engagement fell upon the 
election of a mayor to preside over the porten- 
tous destinies of the metropolis during a twelve- 
month. 

It seemed, from the grounds on which it was 
fought, to be the old battle of patrician and ple- 
beian. On one side, the candidate was Herbert 
Hickock, Esquire, a wholesale auctioneer, and 
tolerably good Latin scholar : a gentleman who 
sallied forth every morning at nine o'clock from 
a fashionable residence in Broadway, dressed in 
a neat and gentlemanly suit of black, an im- 
maculate pair of gloves, large white ruffles in 
his bosom, and a dapper cane in his hand. 

Opposed to him, as a candidate for the mayor- 
alty, was a master shoemaker, affectionately 
and familiarly known as Bill Snivel. He was 
particularly celebrated for the amount of un- 
clean garments he was able to arrange about 
his person — a rusty, swaggering hat, and a rug- 
ged style of English with which he garnished 
his conversation. The great principles on 
which the warfare was waged were, on the one 
hand, that tidy apparel is an indisputable evi- 
dence of a foul and corrupt code of principles ; 
and on the other, that, to be poor and unclean, 
denotes a total deprivation of the reasoning 
faculties. 

So that the leading object of the Bill Snivel 
party seemed to be, to discover Mr. Hickock in 
some act of personal uncleanliness or cacogra- 
phy ; while the Hickock party as strenuously 
bent all their energies to the detection of Mr. 
Bill Snivel in the use of good English or unex- 
ceptionable linen. The names with which they 



THE GREAT CHARTER CONTEST. 



43 



mutually christened each other exhibit the depth 
and strength of their feelings on this point. The 
one was known as the Silk-stocking Gentry : 
the other by the comprehensive appellation of 
the Loafers. 

At the approach of a New York charter elec- 
tion, it is truly astonishing how great a curiosi- 
ty springs up as to the personal habits of the 
gentlemen presented on either side as candi- 
dates. The most excruciating anxiety appears 
to seize the community to learn certain little bi- 
ographical incidents as to their birth, parentage, 
morals, and the everyday details of their life. In 
truth, on this occasion, the wardrobe of one of 
the nominees had been so often and so face- 
tiously alluded to by two or three of the news- 
papers, that the Bill Snivel general vigilance 
committee had felt it their duty to furnish one 
of their members with a large double telescope 
— which he planted, by resolution of the com- 
mittee, every night and morning directly oppo- 
site the chamber-window of Herbert Hickock, 
Esquire, with the laudable purpose of discover- 
ing, in an authentic way, what were that can- 
didate's habits of dress. A manuscript report 
of his ingenious observations, it is said, was cir- 
culated freely among the members of the com- 
mittee. No copy, that I have learned, has ever 
found its way to the press. As every one knows, 
the advent of an election creates a general and 
clamorous demand for full-grown young men of 
twenty-one years of age. To meet this demand, 
a surprising cultivation of beards took place 
among the Hickock youth who happened to 
want a few days or months of that golden pe- 
riod. 

Furthermore, a large number of the Bill Sniv- 
el voters in the upper wards of the city, became 
suddenly consumptive, and were forced to re- 
pair, for the benefit of their health, to the more 
southern and genial latitudes of the first, sec- 
ond, and third wards ; and the Hickock men 
residing in those wards were seized as suddenly 
with alarming bilious symptoms which compelled 
them to emigrate abruptly to the more vigor- 
ous and bracing regions in the northern part of 
the island. Pleasant aquatic excursions, too, 
were undertaken by certain gentlemen of the 
Bill Snivel tinge of politics (whose proper dom- 
icils were at Hartford and Haverstraw), and 
they came sailing down the North and East 
livers, in all kinds of craft, on visits to their 
metropolitan brethren, and dropped their com- 
pliments in the shape of small folded papers, 
in square, green boxes with a slit in the top. 

To keep up the spirit of the contest, several 
hundreds of the silk-stocking men packed them- 
selves regularly every night into a large, oblong 
room, and presented a splendid collection of fine 
coats and knowing faces — like a synod of grave 
herrings in a firkin — to the contemplation of sun- 
dry small men, with white pocket-handkerchiefs 
and bad colds, who, in turn, came forward and 
apostrophized a striped flag and balcony of boys 
on the opposite wall. 

Certain other hundreds of the Bill Snivel 



men regaled themselves in a similar way, in 
another large, oblong room, except that the gen- 
tlemen who came forward to them served them- 
selves up in spotted silk handkerchiefs — voices 
a key louder — noses a thought larger — and fa- 
ces a tinge redder than their rivals. The for- 
mer occasionally quoted latin and the latter took 
snuff. With regard to the noises which now 
and then emanated from the lungs of the re- 
spective assemblages — there was more music 
in the shouts and vociferations of the Hickock 
meetings — more vigor and rough energy in the 
Bill Snivel. If a zoological distinction might 
be made, the Bill Snivel voice resembled that 
of a cage-full of hungry young tigers, slightly 
infuriated ; while the Hickock seemed to be mod- 
elled on the clamor of an old lion after dinner. 
Each meeting had some particular oratorical fa- 
vorite. In one, a slim man was in the habit of 
exhibiting a long, sallow face at & o'clock every 
evening, between a pair of tall sperm candles, and 
solemnly declaring that — the country was ruin- 
ed, and that he was obliged to pay twelve and 
a half cents a pound for liver ! At the Bill 
Snivel, a short, stout man, with an immense 
bony fist, was accustomed, about half an hour 
later, to appear on a high platform — and an- 
nounce in a stentorian voice that " the people 
was on its own legs again," which was rather 
surprising when we know how fond some peo- 
ple are of getting into other people's boots; 
and that " the democracy was carrying the 
country before it," which was also a profound 
postulate, meaning — the democracy was carry- 
ing the democracy before it — they constituting 
the country at all times, and the country at all 
times constituting them ! 

In the meantime, committee-men of all sorts 
and descriptions are at work in rooms of every 
variety of wall and dimension. The whole city 
is covered with hand-bills, caricatures, mani- 
festoes, exposures, pointed facts, neat little 
scraps of personal history, and various other 
pages of diverting political literature. Swarms 
cluster about the polls; banners stream from 
windows, cords, and housetops. A little man 
rides about on the box of an enormous wagon, 
blowing a large brass trumpet, and waving a 
white linen flag with a catching inscription — 
and he labors at the trumpet till he blows his 
face out of shape, and his hat off his head, and 
waves the flag until it seems to be a signal of 
distress thrown out by the poor little man with 
the brass trumpet, just as he has broken his 
wind and is sinking with exhaustion. Scouring 
committees beat furiously through the wards in 
every direction. Diving, like sharks, into cel- 
lars, they bring up, as it were between their 
teeth, wretched, scarecrow creatures, who stare 
about when introduced to daylight as if it 
were as great a novelty to them as roast-beef. 
Ascending into garrets, like mounting hawks, 
they bear down in their clutches trembling old 
men, who had vegetated in those try, airy ele- 
vations apparently during a whole century. 
Prominent among the bustling busy-bodies of 



44 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



the hour is Fahrenheit Flapdragon, member of 
the Hickock general committee, the Hickock 
vigilance ward committee, the advertising com- 
mittee, the wharf committee, the committee on 
flags and decorations, the committee on tar-bar- 
rels and tinder-boxes, one of the grand general 
committee on drinking gin-slings and segar-smo- 
king, and member of the committee on noise 
nd applause. By dint of energetic manceu- 
ering, Flapdragon had likewise succeeded in 
being appointed chairman of a single committee, 
viz., that on chairs and benches. He attained 
this enviable elevation (the performance of the 
arduous duties of which drew upon him the 
eyes of the whole ward and the carpenter who 
furnished the benches !) through the votes of a 
majority of the committee of five — one of whom 
was his brother-in-law and the other his business 
partner. The casting vote he had himself giv- 
en judiciously, in his own favor. Fahrenheit 
Flapdragon bore a conspicuous part in the great 
charter contest, now waging between Hickock 
and Snivel. In fact, he was so embarrassed 
with engagements during this hot-blooded elec- 
tion, that he was compelled to furnish himself 
with a long-legged gray horse early on the 
morning of the second day, to carry him about 
with sufficient rapidity from point to point to 
meet them as they sprang up. The little man, of 
a truth, was so tossed and driven about by his va- 
rious self-imposed duties in the committee-rooms, 
streets, and along the wharves, that he came well 
nigh going stark mad. During the day he harried 
up and down the streets, from poll to poll, bear- 
ing tidings from one to the other — distributing 
tickets — cheering on the little boys to shout, 
and placing big men in the passages to stop the 
ingress of Bill Snivel voters ; I say during the 
day he posted from place to place on his lank, 
gray nag with such fury that many sober peo- 
ple thought he had lost his wits and was hunt- 
ing for them on horseback in this distracted 
manner. 

At night, what with drinking gin-slings and 
brandy-and-water at the bar to encourage the 
vagabonds that stood looking wistfully on — 
talking red-hot Hickock politics to groups of 
four or five and six — and bawling applause at 
the different public meetings he attended — he 
presented, at the close of the day's services, 
such a personal appearance that any one might 
supposed he had stayed in an oven till the turn- 
ing point between red and brown arrived, and 
then jumped out and walked home with the ut- 
most possible velocity to keep up his color. 
There are seventeen wards in the city, and eve- 
ry ward has its Fahrenheit Flapdragon. 

While these busy little committee-men are 
bustling and hurrying about, parties of voters 
are constantly arriving on foot, in coaches, ba- 
rouches, open wagons, and omnibuses, accom- 
panied by some electioneering friend who brings 
them up to the polls. Every hour the knots 
about the door swell until they fill the street. 
In the interior of the building, meanwhile, a 
somewhat different scene presents itself. Be- 



hind a counter, on three wooden stools, three 
men are perched, with a green box planted in 
front of the one in the centre, and an officer 
with a staff at either end. The small piece of 
green furniture thus guarded is the ballot-box, 
and all sorts of humanity are every moment ar- 
riving and depositing their votes. Besides 
the officers, two or three fierce-looking men 
stand around the box on either side, and chal- 
lenge, in the most determined manner, every 
suspicious person of the opposite politics. " I 
dispute that man's vote," says one, as a ragged 
young fellow with a dirty face and strong odor 
of brandy approaches ; " I don't believe he is 
entitled to vote." " Yes, he is," replies anoth- 
er, " I know him — he's a good citizen ; but you 
may swear him if you choose !" At this the 
vagabond is pushed up to the counter by one of 
his political friends — Ms hat is knocked off by 
an officer — the chief inspector presents an 
open bible — at which the vagabond stares as if 
it were a stale codfish instead of the gospels — 
a second friend raises his hand for him and pla- 
ces it on the book, and the chief inspector is 
about to swear him — when the Hickock chal- 
lenger cries out, " Ask him if he understands 
the nature of an oath !" " What is an oath ?" 
asks the inspector, solemnly. " D — n your 
eyes !" hiccups the young Bill Snivel voter. 

" Take him out !" shouts the inspector, and 
the officers in attendance, each picking up 
a portion of his coat-collar, hurry him away 
with inconceivable rapidity through a back-door 
into the street, and dismiss him with a hearty 
punch with their staves in the small of his 
back. 

All over the city, wherever a square inch of 
floor or pavement can be obtained — in bar- 
rooms, hotels, streets, newspaper offices — ani- 
mated conversations are got up between the 
Hickock gentry and the Bill Snivel men. 

" If dandy Hickock gets in," says a squint- 
eyed man with a twisted nose, " I've got a roost- 
er pigeon — I'll pick his feathers bare — stick a 
pipe-stem in his claw, friz his topknot — and of- 
fer him as a stump candidate for next mayor." 

" Can your rooster-pigeon spell his own 
name, Crossfire ?" asked a tall Hickock street- 
inspector — " if he can't, you'd better put him a 
quarter under Bill Snivel ; it would be as good 
as an infant school for him !" 

" I think I'd better take my little bantam- 
cock," retorted the squint-eyed man, " he's got a 
fine comb, which would answer for shirt-ruf- 
fles;" and the Bill Snivel auditors gave a clamor- 
ous shout. 

"If he's got a comb," said the tall inspector, 
stooping toward the shouters, " it's more than 
what Bill Snivel's head has seen this two and 
forty years !" The Hickock gentry now sent 
up, in turn, a vigorous hurrah; and a cou- 
ple of ragamuffins in the mob, who had been 
carrying on a little under-dialogue on their own 
account, now pitched into each other in the 
most lively manner, and after being allowed to 
phlebotomize each other very freely, were drawn 



THE GREAT CHARTER CONTEST. 



45 



apart by their respective coat-tails and carried 
to a neighboring pump. 

The battle by no means ceases at the going 
down of the sun ; for, besides the two large as- 
semblages to which we have before alluded, 
there is, in each ward, a nightly meeting in 
some small room in the second story of a public 
house, where about one hundred and fifty mis- 
cellaneous human beings are entertained by 
sundry young attorneys and other spouters, 
practising the English language and trying the 
force of their lungs. At these meetings you 
will be sure, whenever you attend them, to 
meet with certain stereotyped faces — which are 
always there, always with the same smiling ex- 
pression, and looking as if they were a part of 
the wainscoting, or lively pieces of furniture 
fixed there by the landlord to please his guests. 
The smiling gentlemen are office-seekers. In 
the corner, sitting on a small table, you may 
observe a large puffed-out man with red cheeks ; 
he is anxious to obtain the appointment of beer- 
gaugei under the corporation. Standing up by 
the fireplace is a man with a dingy face and 
shivering person, who wishes to be weigher of 
coal, talking to a tall fellow who stoops in the 
shoulders like a buzzard, with a prying nose and 
eye, and a face as hard and round as a paving- 
stone, who is making interest for reappointment 
as street inspector. There is also another, with a 
brown-tanned countenance, patriotically lament- 
ing the decline of the good old revolutionary 
spirit — who wants the office of leather inspector. 

The most prominent man at these meetings 
is orator Bog, a personage whose reputation 
shoots up into a wonderful growth during the 
three days of election, while his declamation is 
fresh, but which suddenly withers and wilts 
away when the heat of the conflict has cooled. 
His eloquence is the peculiar offspring of those 
sunny little republican hotbeds, ward meetings. 

He has just described the city as " split like 
a young eel, from nose to tail, by the diabolical 
and cruel knife of those modern Catilines," the 
aldermen of the city, they having recently run a 
main street through it, north and south. 

" These are the men," he exclaimed with an 
awful smile on his countenance, " these are the 
men that dare insult democracy by appearing 
in public — like goslings — yes, like goslings ! — 
with such articles as these on their legs !" and 
thrusting a pair of tongs — heretofore dexterous- 
ly concealed under the skirts of his coat — into 
his hat, which stood upon the table before him 
— he drew out a pair of fine silk stockings and 
swung them triumphantly over the heads of the 
mob, which screamed and clamored with huge 
delight at the spectacle. " And such articles as 
these !" he shouted, producing, from the same 
receptacle, a shirt about small enough for a 
yearling infant, with enormous green ruffles 
about large enough for a Patagonian. 

" Look at it !" cried Bog, throwing it to one 
of the mob. 

" It's pine-shavin's, painted green," shouted 
the mob. 



" Smell of it !" cried Bog. 
" It's scented with assy-fetid-y !" vociferated 
the ecstatic Bill Snivel men, and a hearty burst 
of laughter broke forth. 

Several lusty vagabonds came near going in- 
to fits when Orator Bog facetiously, though 
gravely, stopped his nose with his thumb and 
finger and remarked, " I think some one has 
brought a skunk into the room !" 

The last hour of the last day of the great 
charter contest has arrived. Every carman, 
every merchant's clerk, every negro with a 
freehold, every stevedore, every lamplighter, 
every street-sweeper, every vagrant, every vag- 
abond, has cast his vote. 

Garret, cellar, sailor's boarding-house, shed, 
stable, sloop, steamboat, and dockyard, have 
been ransacked, and not a human being on the 
great island of Manhattan has escaped the 
clutch of the scouring and district committees 
of the two great contending parties. At this 
critical moment, and as the sun began to look 
horizontally over the chimney-tops with a broad 
face as if he laughed at the quarrels of Hickock 
gentry and Bill Snivel men, two personages were 
prowling and prying along a wharf on the East 
river, like a brace of inquisitive snipe. 

At the self-same moment the eyes of both 
alighted on an object floating in the water, at 
the self-same moment both sprang forward with 
a boat-hook in his hand, and fastened upon the 
object of their mutual glances, one at the one 
extremity, the other at the other. In a time far 
less than it takes the north star to twinkle, the 
object was dragged on shore and proved to be 
the body of a man, enveloped in a fragmentary 
blue coat, roofless hat, and corduroy pantaloons. 
" I claim him," said one of the boat-hook 
gentlemen, a member of the seventh ward Hick- 
ock wharf committee ; " I saw liim first ! he's 
our voter by all that's fair !" 

" He wants a jugful of being yours, my lad," 
retorted the other, a member of the Bill Snivel 
wharf committee. " He's too good a Christian 
to be yours — for don't you see he's just been 
baptized ?" 

" He's mine !" responded the Hickock com- 
mittee-man, " for my hook fastened in his collar, 
and thereby saved his head — he couldn't vote 
without his head !" 

" A timber-head he must have if he'd vote the 
shirt-ruffle ticket," retorted the Bill Snivel com- 
mittee-man. 

By this time a mob had gathered about the 
disputants, who stood holding the rescued body 
each by the leg, with its head downward to let 
the water drain from its windpipe. 

" Why, you land-lubbers," cried a medical 
student, pushing his professional nose through 
the throng, " you'll give the man the apoplexy 
if you hold him that way just half a minute long- 
er." In a trice after, a second medical student 
arrived, and, hearing what the other had said, 
exclaimedj "It's the best thing you can do — 
hold him just as he is, or he's suit- to get tk^ 
dropsy." The mob, however, interfered — the 



46 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



man was laid on his back — and one of the med- 
ical students (who was propitious to the Hick- 
ock code of politics) taking hold of one wrist — 
and the other (who advocated the Bill Snivel 
system) seizing the other, they commenced cha- 
fing his temples, and rubbing the palms of his 
hands. 

The wharf committee-men, meantime, felt in- 
clined to renew the dispute as to their claim on 
the body of the half-drowned loafer, but, by 
advice of the medical gentlemen, it was de- 
ferred to be settled by the man's own lips, 
whenever he should recover the use of them. 
The medical students chafed and rubbed, and 
every minute leaned down to the ear of the 
drowned body, as if to catch some favorable gno- 
sis. " Hurrah for Hickock !" shouted the man, 
opening his eyes just as one of the medical stu- 
dents had withdrawn his mouth from his ear. 
The Hickock portion of the mob gave three 
cheers. " Hurrah for Bill Snivel !" shouted the 
resuscitated loafer as the other medical student 
applied his lips to his organ of hearing. 

The loafer was now raised upon his legs, 
and marshalled like some great hero between 
the medical students and the two members 
of the wharf committees — and borne toward 
the polls — having each hand alternately sup- 
plied by the Hickock people and the Bill Sniv- 
vel, with the tickets of the respective par- 
ties. They arrived at the door of the elec- 
tion room, with the body of this important and 
disputed voter, just one minute after sundown, 
and, finding him thus to be of no value, 
the Hickock medical student aud committee- 
man, and the Bill Snivel student and committee- 
man, united in applying their feet to his flanks 
and kicking him out of the building ! 

In two or three days the votes of the city 
were duly canvassed, and it was found that they 
stood, for Bill Snivel, 13,000— for Herbert Hick- 
ock, 13,303— scattering, 20. Three hundred 
and three learned Bill Snivel gentlemen hav- 
ing, in consequence of their limited knowledge 
ot orthography and politics, voted for Bill Sniv- 
el for constable instead of mayor ! Herbert 
Hickock, Esq., was, therefore, declared duly 
elected Mayor of the city and county of New 
York. 



THE WITCH AND THE DEACON. 

A DEACON WITH A HEART LIKE A WHIRLPOOL, 
AND A GOBLIN WITH A TAIL LIKE A FISH. 

During the close of the seventeenth century 
the prince of darkness made several very hot 
inroads into different quarters of the righteous 
old colonies of New England. In truth, there 
was so " prodigious a descent of devils upon 
divers places near the centre of this province,"* 
and it suddenly swarmed in every nook and 

* Cotton Mather. 



comer with such crowds of spectres and gob- 
lins, that the good people were in a fair way 
of being ejected to furnish them a settlement. 
Never was the devil supplied with so great a 
variety of recruits. The fierce incursions of 
which I have spoken were sometimes headed 
by one captain, sometimes by another. In one 
quarter the troops were led on by a black man, 
of a gunpowder aspect, and more than human 
dimensions. This fellow generally skirmished 
about the edges of woods and timber-lands, 
clutching up straggling old beldames and tame 
Indians. Then there was your tawny-colored 
goblin, short of stature, who was sometimes 
seen with a whole pack of spectres hovering at 
his heels ; your pugnacious devil, whose chief 
sport it was to distribute dry blows liberally about 
the ears of the poor wretches who came within 
his jurisdiction ; your high-flying devil, who 
snatched people out of their chambers, and 
horsed them away miles through the air, over 
trees and hills, free of postage ; beside a large 
assortment of menial imps, who were drubbed 
heartily by their employer if they failed to do 
their vile work to his satisfaction. To these 
were sometimes added a better-bred class of 
goblins, who acted as secretaries and book- 
keepers (at a liberal salary I presume) to the 
devil, and who had charge of the great red 
muster-book to which new recruits were forced 
to put their hands.* Never was a campaign 
of old Nick better arranged, or carried on with 
more spirit. 

It was on a night in the year sixteen ninety- 
seven, and after the smoke and heat of the 
main engagement at Salem had died away, that 
a tall woman, about sixty years of age, was 
crossing a stone fence in the choleric little vil- 
lage of Rye. It was a still, cheerful night, in 
the close of August, and the moon shone down 
into the field upon which the aged woman was 
entering with a brightness so pure that it seemed 
almost unnatural. 

Before her lay an enclosed space of about 
four acres, stretching up from the edge of a 
quiet little brook to the brow of a hill, and 
covered with bushes, shrubs, and herbs, of ev- 
ery description. Near the water's edge a whole 
company of braggart bulrushes thrust up their 
heads, and lorded it over the inoffensive and 
unambitious little stream with an air of vast 
superiority, while around these topping pre- 
tenders a few humble water-cresses gathered 
themselves, and modestly vegetated and blos- 
somed. Farther on, and along the fence, a 
testy crew of blackberry bushes had assembled, 
and stood wagging their heads in every wind 
that stirred, and near them a malignant poison- 
vine crept along the rails like a serpent. 

As ;he old woman stepped into the field out 
of a piece of woods that overhung it from the 
west, she startled a garter-snake from the bank, 
and the timid creature, with its light streaks 

* For authority as to these abstruse points, consult 
" More Wonders of the Invisible World" (1700), tracts 
pamphlets, and surviving aged females 



THE WITCH AND THE DEACON. 



47 



of yellow dashed with spots of blue, twinkled 
away through the grass toward the brook, 
leaving behind it, or seeming to leave behind 
it, as it glided swiftly along, a trail of mixed 
orange-colored light. 

" A better night heart could not wish," mut- 
tered the old woman, as she strided into the 
field ; " but where Dick delays I can not guess. 
He promised to be about through the village 
with the basket before I could be here by the 
woods. A slow foot gets a light supper, Dick." 
Uttering this sententious saying, she bustled 
about the ground, plucking here and there a 
handful of some herb or other, and laying it 
carefully in the lap of her gown. In a few 
minutes she was joined by a low, strange-look- 
ing young man, about twenty years old, who 
had upon his head a hat which had been per- 
haps, originally, of the shape of a bell, but 
which was pinched by time and weather, at the 
top, until it now resembled a withered winter- 
pear. On his arm he bore a dilapidated oaken 
>asket. 

" Richard, wherefore didst thou tarry ? 
Thou knewest the business was pressing hith- 
»rward. The ale you might have tippled at 
another time !" 

" I have not tarried," replied the strange- 
looking young man, " to guzzle ale in the vil- 
lage, nor to quaff of old Zickland's cider-casks ; 
nor has old Zickland's watch-dog held me, as 
he did the other night, by the coat-tail." 

" What was it, then, that kept thee ?" asked 
the old woman, peering into his face with a 
look of considerable anxiety and interest. 

" No less than that church mastiff, Deacon 
JRrangle, and his yoke-fellow Fishtyke, the el- 
•ler. They fastened on me with tongue and 
teeth as I passed the parsonage — and demand- 
ed, whither I was going ? for what purpose that 
basket was meant ? and whether you was at 
home to-night ?" 

"A curse be on the tribe!" said his aged 
companion lifting her head up until her bowed 
form was almost erect, and striking a staff 
which she bore in her hand sharply upon the 
ground. " An old woman's curse light on the 
meddlesome interlopers, the children of Belial 
that will not let the musty taper of an old body's 
life go out without helping it with a devilish 
whiil* of their pious breath !" 

" Curse not so loud, if you please, Aunt Gat- 
ty," said the young man, " the big-eared dogs 
arc not far off, I reckon ; for I saw them sneak 
up into the shadow of the fence, as I left 'em, 
with their faces turned this way." 

" If the evil will hear, let them hear," con- 
tinued Aunt Gatty in a still louder voice in 
spite of her companion's remonstrance, "I 
have been hunted like a paynter from Salem to 
Weathersfield— from Weathersfield to Har'- 
ford — through every hole and corner of the 
colonies — and now they would worry me out of 
this abiding-place with their horns of Jericho 
and false shoutings and clamors at my heels ?" 
The wrath of Aunt Gatty now sunk into a sul- 



len silence and they proceeded quietly in their 
labor. 

" It's strange, Dick," she said at length in a 
calmer tone, " that men who spend an hour, 
morning and arternoon, one day out of seven to 
tell how much they love their brethren, will 
harass an old woman who spends her time in 
doing the same thing without sayin' anything 
about original sin or her pious intentions — 
curing bodies more nor they cure souls, I'll 
warrant !" 

" It's the cock that mounts the fence and 
splits his throat with crowing that lays no eggs, 
you know, Aunt Gatty," replied Dick, with a 
subdued laugh. 

" Yes," returned Aunt Gatty, adopting the 
same strain, " and you know, Dick, how often 
deacon crow in the woods, visits about, in his 
black coat, among the birds to see that they're 
all in a plump, healthy condition" — " Particu- 
larly 'bout killing-time !" interposed Dick. 
Another brief pause now ensued, which was 
interrupted again by Aunt Gatty's remarking — 
" I trow, Richard, here is the finest plantain- 
leaf I've found this many a day : it's broad 
enough to kiver any galled horse's haunch that 
ever smarted, or to cure the pinch of the worst 
witch that ever rode a bean-pole !" 

This observation was followed up by a long 
and elaborate lecture on the various uses to 
which plantain might be judiciously applied. 

" What's this ?" asked Dick at the close of 
her shrewd observations, presenting an herb 
with a small crooked root, and a smooth green 
leaf something in the shape of an Indian arrow- 
head. 

" Thou art a pretty fellow, Dick Snikkers, to 
gather yerbs !" said the old woman taking the 
plant and giving it a hasty examination — 
" Why, this is nothing more nor less than colt's 
foot. It 'udn't take a witch to tell thee that, 
Dick ! Come this way, Richard," she con- 
tinued, sitting down upon a rock in the middle 
of the field, laying her crutch across her lap, 
and placing the basket at her side, " it's time 
that you know'd the properties of yerbs : 
eighteen, last shearing time, and not able to tell 
old colt's foot !" 

Dick Snikkers at this bidding took a seat at 
her side, and culling from the basket, herb after 
herb, the old woman expatiated on its qualities 
with a learned spirit. 

"Here's wild yisup, Dick," she said, "you 
must be kerful to tell it from balsam ; which is 
shorter and more bunch-like at top. It has a 
pleasant smell, and is a very nice yerb, Dick. 
Well should I know thee, yisup!" holding a 
bunch of it up and contemplating it with a fix- 
ed and thoughtful eye, "for they gave thee to 
the poor girl, Maggy Rule, of Salem, that was 
possest by evil angels. They said, Richard, I 
was her evil spirit ! — poor thing, she's in Heaven 
now, and can tell whether old Gained Heer- 
about ever harmed her lite, in thought, word, or 
look !" "Hush Tsaid Dick Snikkers, -I heard 
some one over there by the sassafras tree.'' 



48 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



At that moment the shadow of a man glided be- 
hind the trunk of a monstrous black walnut, 
which overhung the brook ; but the shade of 
the tree prevented his being discerned by either 
of the parties. 

" Pooh !" said the old woman, listening anx- 
iously for a moment, " It's nothing but a dead 
nut that fell from a dry limb." 

" 'Tis more than that, Aunt Gatty, I'm sure," 
responded Dick, " for I heard something cough 
like a man — and — hark — there's some one an- 
swering him over here by the elder-bushes !" 

" I hear no noise, Dick ; the moon has put the 
whim into your head — or else — it's nothing more 
than a couple of hoarse crickets playing under 
a sorrel patch !" 

From some source or other, however, Aunt 
Gatty had been impressed with the necessity of 
quitting the spot as speedily as possible and ob- 
taining the shelter of a good roof. She there- 
fore hurriedly closed her lecture, hooked the 
basket upon her arm, seized her crutch, and, fol- 
lowed by Dick Snikkers, hastened away. 

The next morning the sun, at an early hour 
as it shone or rather struggled through a single 
dusky pane in the eastern side of the vestry room 
of the old Rye church, fell upon three men 
seated at a triangular table, each at a side. 
The silver-mounted cane of one of them lay 
obliquely across the table, and the hats of all 
three hung upon wooden pins fixed about the 
apartment. One of the party was a middle- 
aged man with a long, dry countenance and a 
complexion like a mulberry. His coat was but- 
toned up, in a threatening manner, from waist- 
band to chin, and about his whole person and 
bearing there was an air of pompous authority. 
"This matter must be looked to," said he, 
throwing his head back into his coat collar, ad- 
vancing his respectable paunch, and placing his 
hands knowingly under the tails of his coat. 
" The Lord will not suffer the evil to triumph — 
nor will I. Blessed be the name of God, he 
hath given unto us his inspired statutes ; and as 
first deacon of the Congregational meeting- 
house in Rye, Philip Brangle, will enforce 
them, even unto the hanging of witches and 
sorcerers !" 

" There I differ from thee, Brother Brangle : 
I hold that witches should be exterminated by 
fire and fagot, for thereby the evil angel or 
spirit is conquered with his own element, yea, 
even hell-fire !" 

This heroic suggestion proceeded from the 
mouth of Mr. John Fishtyke, elder, and a most 
singular mouth it was, and still more singular 
was the whole countenance to which it belong- 
ed. Nature, from some unaccountable whim or 
other, had seen fit to group all the features of 
Mr. John Fishtyke in the very centre of his 
face: his nose, eyes, and mouth, were huddled 
closely together, leaving a very extensive suburb 
of unsettled visnomy to lie barren beyond. 
The elder's head from a front view was thus 
made to resemble the human lineaments paint- 
ed in the bull's eye of a large target. 



" I fancy not," continued the owner of this 
paradoxical countenance, "being dragged twice 
through the pond by the same cat. Hanging 
hath been tried and found of none effect. Were 
not sorcerers and witches strung up like onions, 
at Weathersfield and Salem, Deacon Brangle — 
and what did it avail ? Did not witchcraft 
increase ? Did not the lions and bears of hell 
abound greatly thereafter ? — This is pulpit- 
news !" 

"I care not to argue the question at this 
present season," replied the mulberry-complex- 
ioned deacon. " Hung she shall be — If I am 
Philip Brangle, Deacon — like a dead skunk !" 

" If she be not burned, by the grace of God, 
I will yield up my eldership : burned to a black 
crust, the foul hag !" 

" I have picked the gallows tree ; therefore 
disquiet thyself no further, Elder Fishtyke !" 
retorted Brangle. 

"And I have chosen the fagots for her 
burning, and they are now cleft in my door 
yard — so be at ease !" 

" Thou art in league with the wretches, I 
verily fear, Mr. Fishtyke : thou so strongly 
urgest fire, in which thou knowest (being their 
natural element) they may live like salaman- 
ders !" 

" Has it come to this !" exclaimed John 
Fishtyke, advancing one leg before the other 
and dashing his fist furiously upon the trian- 
gular table, while a general conflagration raged 
in the unsettled outskirts of his physiognomy, 
which gradually extended inward kindling his 
eyes, nose and cheeks until his whole counte- 
nance was fairly a-blaze. " Ha ! ha ! has it 
come to this, I am colleague of witches — am 
I ? — As true as the Holy One of Israel liveth" — 
he was proceeding to utter some terrible threat 
when he was interrupted by the gentleman who 
occupied the third side of the triangle, who 
mildly remarked, " Before we proceed to hang 
or burn the accused, would it not be well to 
have evidence of her guilt ?" 

Here was common ground for Brangle and 
Fishtyke, who were not to be cheated of their 
victim by the mere want of proofs, and they 
both broke out together. " Did I not see her 
last night with her familiar, in Lyon's black 
meadow," said Brangle, " Giving him hellish 
instruction in drugs," continued Fishtyke, " con- 
fessing that she was Margaret Rule's evil 
angel," said Brangle, " and that she was the 
worst witch that ever rode a bean-pole," con- 
tinued Fishtyke. " What was it she averred 
concerning the lameness of Lyon's colt's foot ?" 
" That she had a hand in it," answered Fish- 
tyke. 

"Pause, if you please, my friends," said 
the mild man who was the clergymen of the 
cure or parish — "What look and person had 
her familiar ?" 

In reply to this question, Deacon and Elder 
again broke forth in a common cry — " A huge 
black man with hair like white wool," said 
Fishtyke. 



THE WITCH AND THE DEACON. 



" A small white man with black hair," said 
Brangle. 

" He bore an enormous matchlock in his 
hand," said Fishtyke. 

" It was a slim fishing-rod," said Brangle. 

" Horns like an ox," continued Fishtyke. 

" A sailor's cap close to his head, methought," 
said Brangle. 

"A long tail behind him like a whale." 

" A round-about and tight breeches." 

"Hold, gentlemen," interposed the mild 
clergyman — " Be seated, an it please you. 
Your testimony differs so widely as to the per- 
sonal appearance of the woman's familiar or 
goblin, I doubt whether it would be possible 
for you ever to identify the supposed sorceress 
herself. We had better proceed to the business 
of our cure." 

"If you please," said the mulberry-faced 
Brangle, rising with much solemnity, embed- 
ding his head in his coat collar, advancing his 
swag-belly and adjusting his hands beneath his 
coat-tail as before, — " If you please : the Lord 
in his righteous and inscrutable providences 
hath made Philip Brangle a Deacon and head 
of the Rye Congregational settlement. The 
duties, the cares, the labors, the anxieties of 
that station he intends to fulfil until ' Philip 
Brangle' is indorsed on a silver plate upon his 
coffin. As to this witch — this vile bosom-friend 
and ape of the devil — if ocular proof be not 
sufficient, is there not enough — yea, more than 
enough of other evidences ?" •* 

" As brief as convenient, Deacon Brangle," 
interposed the mild clergyman. 

" Was it longer ago than last Sabbath day," 
continued Brangle, " that I saw her, at a public 
meeting — leave the church in haste and forci- 
bly put to the door as she passed out. The 
devil had sent for her and she must come !" 

"It might have been the colic," suggested 
the mild clergyman. 

" On the twenty-second of June last," re- 
sumed the Deacon, referring to a gilt-edged 
note-book that he held in his hand, "did I 
not hear the sound of a trumpet, from her hovel, 
late in the evening, summoning a meeting of 
witches and sorcerers at that place ?" 

" It was the horn of the stage-driver," said the 
mild clergyman, " for I received a letter by the 
same mail. He was detained beyond his hour 
by a break in the Harlaem bridge." 

Nettled by this summary disposal of his 
charges, he at length exclaimed, as if he expect- 
ed to settle the question beyond dispute in his 
own favor, by so cogent an evidence — " Do you 
tell me, sir, that the fowls of Mr. Deliverance 
Lyon have not been under diabolical possession 
evei since this Gad Heerabout came into these 
parts ? Have not many of them gone off the 
roost and disappeared, none could tell whither ! 
What hath become of that fine cock-turkey — 
ide of his yard? Whither have gone his 
fatted geese and his noble brood of short-legged 
hens ? Evil angels have made way with them, I 



fear; they have suffered sorely from spectral 
visitation." 

" More probably converted into chicken-pie 
and roasted birds, by Mungo Park, his head 
slave : with Richard Snikkers as an accom- 
plice," suggested the mild clergyman. 

" Will you have the woman examined in our 
presence ?" cried Philip Brangle, as a last resort. 
" I saw her just pass the door." 

"To that there can be no reasonable hin- 
drance," answered the clergyman, " if it be done 
soberly." 

Thereupon Messrs. Brangle and Fishtyke 
prepared to sally forth, arrest Gatty Heerabout, 
and bring her before the parochial court. 

It may be as well to observe in this place, 
that Dick Snikkers, before the session of the 
court began, had found his way under the floor 
of the church — lifted a board, and climbing over 
the pulpit, landed himself in a little terra in- 
cognita of an attic or garret above the small 
vestry-room, in which it was assembled. Here, 
through a knot hole, he had listened to all their 
proceedings and enjoyed the inexpressible plea- 
sure of observing the combustible countenance 
of Fishtyke, and the mulberry complexion of 
Deacon Brangle, in their various striking 
phases. 

As soon as the apprehension of Dame Heer- 
about was named, he had made his way back 
into the open air — leaped two or three fences — 
stood in the road before Aunt Gatty — and an- 
nounced to her their purpose of questioning her 
in person. 

" Let them question," she replied, in answer 
to Dick's information, standing erect and turn- 
ing her face toward the church — " I fear no 
man, face to face, to answer unto the deeds 
done in the body ; as far as man may rightly 
question. On to the meetinghouse : they shall 
not be leg-weary nor arm-weary in dragging 
me to the trial !" Mastering her crutch with a 
strong hand, and adjusting her bonnet carefully 
to her head, she marched with a haughty step 
toward the vestry-room. She arrived at the 
door just as Brangle had planted his cane upon 
the ground to take his first step towards her 
apprehension. 

" How is this, Jezebel !" he exclaimed, taking 
her violently by the wrist ; " hast thou the 
effrontery to approach the sanctuary so nearly 
as this after leaving it as thou didst last Lord's 
day." 

" Take off that hand," she exclaimed in turn, 
" or an acquaintance will be gotten up forth- 
with betwixt my staff and thy head." And so 
saying she raised her crutch in token of the 
promised introduction; but Deacon Brangle, 
unwilling to trespass on her kindness in that 
particular, speedily dismissed her hand from his 
grasp. 

The whole party was now assembled in the 
vestry-room. 

" Gartred Heerabout," said the mild clergy- 
man, " you have been suspected of witchcraft 



50 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



by Deacon Brangie and Elder Fishtyke. What- 
ever I may think of the charges which have 
been made against you, I was willing that you 
should be examined in vestry before you were 
called to answer for your life to the civil magis- 
trate. Deacon Brangie, you may examine her — 
temperately, if you please !" 

" Woman !" began Brangie, mounting to his 
feet and screwing his countenance into a hard, 
inquisitorial expression — " Woman ! were you 
not out last night culling drugs, for hellish pur- 
poses, in the black meadow ? and instructing 
your familiar goblin in the art of applying those 
drugs to purposes of sorcery and witchcraft ? 
Answer as you value your soul !" 

" Oh Gotf ! God !" exclaimed the woman in 
reply clasping her hands and raising them above 
her head in ai> attitude and with an expression 
of intense supplication — " Merciful God ! the 
very bread that a poor old woman eats, turns 
bitter in her mouth ! My masters," she contin- 
ued, dropping her hands heavily upon her breast, 
and turning her gaze upon the party about the 
table, " My masters, I am nothing but a poor old 
herb-gatherer. If to soothe the lonely hours of 
some broken, sick man, with a simple medicine — 
a plantain-leaf, a bit of birch bark, or a drink of 
wildyisup tea, makes Gartred Heerabout a witch, 
be she a witch to time's end and yea, for aught 
I care, to eternity's end — if such might be !" 

" A confession as to the drugs," cried Dea- 
con Brangie. 

"Palpably," responded Elder Fishtyke — 
" what says the woman, touching the familiar 
goblin with her in the meadow ?" 

" It was Dick Snikkers, please your wor- 
ship," replied aunt Gatty, with a smile that be- 
trayed something of contempt, " helping me 
gather the yerbs — and I was telling him the 
yerbs' qualities." 

" A fine fable, thou old brass-jawed hag ; her 
soul is in a hopeful way, is it not, think you, 
brother Fishtyke ?" said Brangie, turning to 
the elder ; " she exhibits observable symptoms 
of a new creature ! — Poor wretch, thou hadst 
better recal what thou saidst last night about 
the bewitching of Margaret Rule of Salem ! out 
with it !" 

" May the gracious One pardon thee for this 
mistreatment of an old, friendless woman. I 
never harmed thee — why should st thou perse- 
cute me ? I never laid hand's-weight on child 
or chick of thine — why wilt thou smite me with 
hard words ? I am no witch, God knows, but 
a simple, sarviceful old body, with a soul like 
yourself, Deacon Brangie, believe it or not as 
you choose !" 

The old woman dropped her head upon her 
bosom and sobbed audibly and heavily ; and the 
mild clergyman was so much affected by her 
emotion, that he was forced to turn his head 
away to conceal a tear. 

" A soul like Deacon Brangie !" cried the ves- 
tryman, horror-struck with the supposition. "A 
soul like Deacon Brangie ! — thou art fool as 
well as witch. Begone — it is folly to waste 



words in examining such as thee. The rope of 
the hangman will settle the matter before sun- 
down — begone !" 

In spite of the remonstrance and entreaty of 
the clergyman, he enforced his command by seiz- 
ing the old woman and dragging her forcibly 
toward the door. Her spirit was aroused by 
this unexpected insult, and, exerting a strength 
not supposed to belong to her, she threw off his 
grasp, and, standing proudly erect, exclaimed, 
" Wo upon thee and thine ! — henceforth for ev- 
er — wo and wailing without end ! Or ever 
the sun sinks, Gatty Heerabout, mayhap, will 
be beyond reach of judge or deacon." With 
these words she strided calmly and haughtily 
away. 

As she gained the door, Deacon Brangie said, 
in a hushed and trembling voice, " She is aided 
by devils, I do believe ; Satan, I verily fear, 
wrenched her arm away from my hold ;" and, 
as she disappeared, he lifted his voice and cried 
out after her — " Avoid, thou she-devil, in the 
name of God the Father, the Son, and the Ho- 
ly Ghost, avoid !" 

As Deacon Brangie wended homeward from 
the vestry-room, after the close of the morning's 
business, he discovered Dick Snikkers sitting 
upon the fence of Rye bridge, whistling with 
all his might. 

He presented to the vision of the deacon a 
very singular and novel spectacle, having on 
the upper part of his person a gay white round- 
about and pear-shaped hat, and, on his nether 
extremities, a^Tair of tight pantaloons, and low, 
red shoes ; and possessing, withal, a nose turn- 
ed up slightly at the end, which gave a humor- 
ous appearance to his visage, and a set of twink- 
ling, black eyes, that kept a bright lookout up- 
on the little, hooked feature just mentioned. 
Add to this, that he now had both hands forced 
vehemently into his pockets, and that both 
cheeks were inflated with the blasts of wind 
which supplied the clamorous music that reach- 
ed Deacon Brangle's ear, and, we may honest- 
ly say that he furnished a rare and original ob- 
ject of contemplation. 

" Good morrow, your worship," said Dick 
Snikkers, pausing just long enough in his labor 
to utter these words, and resuming his musical 
vocation as soon as they were delivered. 

" Good morning, Mr. Snikkers," responded 
the deacon, darkening his mulberry complexion 
with an incipient frown, with the expectation 
of awing Mr. Snikkers into silence or a petri- 
faction, " you seem to be in fine spirits this 
morning !" 

" Only whistling a little for the consumption," 
replied Dick. 

" Whistling for the consumption !" exclaimed 
Mr. Brangie, moderating the severity of his 
manner, considerably, for his curiosity equalled 
his pompousness every day in the week, except 
vestry-meeting days and Sundays, "that's a very 
singular remedy, Richard," said he familiarly. 

" Not at all, your worship," answered Dick, 
charmed with his style of address, and throwing 



THE WITCH AND THE DEACON. 



51 



a queer look out of the corner of his eye — " not 
at all, your worship — we poor folk can't afford 
to pay the doctor — so we must needs make na- 
tur' our mediciner. Now, in the matter of a 
cold, Deacon Brangle, you'll ohsarve, if you 
was ever passing through a lane in a mornin' 
after a chill, rainy night — you'll ohsarve a bird 
on the end of every stake blowing it out strong 
through his throat, like a young harry-cane — 
and what's it for ? Why, they've all cotcht colds 
over night, and they're a whistling 'em away !" 
At this profound and philosophical explana- 
tion, the mulberry countenance of Philip Bran- 
gle becaue amazingly thoughtful — he cast his 
eyes in meditative glances upon the ground — 
and his chin sank inquiringly upon the silver- 
mounted extremity of his walking-stick. 

" It's so, your worship," said Dick Snikkers, 
" there can be no doubt on it. I've heard aunt 
Gatty tell what I've told your worship more than 
fifty times !" 

" A strange woman, that Dame Heerabout," 
said Brangle, lifting his mulberry features, 
through which an altogether new expression 
had suddenly shot. " She's always observing 
nature, I suppose, Richard ? Night and day, 
are, no doubt, all the same to her in pursuit 
of this useful knowledge — is it not so, Mr. 
Snikkers ?" 

" Does your worship observe anything green 
in my left orb ?" responded Mr. Snikkers, em- 
ploying a very elegant species of interrogatory, 
which is ignorantly supposed to have sprung up 
in these latter days, whereas, it was a common 
topic of conversation in iEsop's time, between 
the currant-bush and the gooseberry. 

This question seemed to be so peculiarly point- 
ed and pertinent, as to awaken Mr Brangle's most 
powerful feelings in reply ; and, hastily convert- 
ing his mulberry into a deep red, he exclaimed 
— " Thou beggarly scamp ! how darest thou 
talk in this way to Philip Brangle, first Deacon 
of the Rye Congregational church ? I'll teach 
thee what becomes such fellows : — You are 
hereby summoned to appear before the paro- 
chial vestry of our church on Thursday after- 
noon next, at ten o'clock in the morning, to 
answer for contempt of one of its officers," and 
he handed to Mr. Snikkers a printed summons, 
regularly filled up, with his own name inserted. 
Mr. Dick Snikkers received the document, 
and immediately, tearing two circular holes in 
it, placed it in a very expressive manner across 
his nose to mimic spectacles, and commenced 
whistling a psalm-tune. Deacon Brangle had 
cast his eye back to see how his decisive ser- 
vice of a church-warrant had operated on the 
nerves of Dick Snikkers, just as that young gen- 
tleman had opened his concerto, in glasses. 

The sight was too much for the pious Bran- 
gle, and, striding swiftly back, he cried out — 
" I'm the vestry myself; I'll settle the contempt 
on the spot ; boy, I will wring thy nose !" Say- 
ing this, he darted upon that organ of Dick 
Snikkers like a pike-fish upon a fresh bait. 
"And I'll wring yours !" retorted Dick Snik- 



kers, darting upon the same feature of Mr. Bran- 
gle. Of the two, Snikkers might be considered 
the more successful, as he did fasten upon the 
knob of Mr. Brangle's face, whereas, Mr. Bran- 
gle merely managed to pass his thumb and fin- 
ger over the extremity of a smooth willow whis- 
tle, which hung at one of Dick Snikkers' but- 
ton-holes. However, he performed the whole 
ceremony on it with the same hearty honesty 
as if it had been the genuine organ, Dick Snik- 
kers, meantime, pulling away at the real nose 
in admirable and muscular style. 

At length Snikkers drew off, and Brangle 
drew off, carrying with him a nose as red as a 
brick with pulling, and Dick Snikkers' willow 
whistle between his fingers. 

" Egad !" said the deacon, with a horrible 
chuckle, as he drew out the latter article, which 
he had unconsciously thrust into his coat-pock- 
et — " I believe I've pulled the fellow's nose off. 
Ah !" starting back with a monstrously chop- 
fallen countenance, " what have we here — the 
fellow's baby-whistle. It can't be that I was 
tugging at this all the time," and an awful sen- 
sation thrilled through his mind ; " it must be, 
I thought the scamp had got a strange notch in 
his nose !" With this last observation he ab- 
ruptly pitched the toy over a stone fence into 
the bushes, and hurried away meditating re- 
venge, and still more resolved to push the mat- 
ter against Gatty Heerabout, in whose plans 
this irreverent dog seemed to be an accomplice. 
It may be well, however, to observe, that in car- 
rying his schemes into effect he was doomed to 
lose the valuable aid and co-operation of Mr. 
Fishtyke; for that exemplary gentleman had 
refused to have anything further to do with the 
affair, when he found it impossible to obtain a 
compromise suggested by him, by which Gatty 
Heerabout was to be " first burned to a crispy 
or roasted-pig brown, and then hung by the neck 
till dead !" He therefore broke off all connex- 
ion with Deacon Brangle, vaunting that he 
would, before long, get a witch to prosecute on 
his own account ! 

As the sun sloped toward the west on the af- 
ternoon of that same day, and as broad masses 
of its light entered the open door of a crumbling 
cottage, or rather hovel, which stood upon the 
brow of a hill, overlooking Rye, they fell upon 
the form of old Gartred Heerabout, sitting in 
a rush-bottomed chair, with a bible spread open 
on her knees. The excitement of long-contin- 
ued persecution and the seD =>'e of insult attached 
to the charge of witchcraft, together with a 
strong natural sensibility of character, appear 
to have at length affectei her reason, and as 
she sat lonely and unfriended in her hovel, her 
mind poured itself out. in reminiscences of an 
earlier and happier peviod of life, mingled with 
bitter denunciations F.nd gloomy forebodings of 
some dreaded event near at hand. 

" The Lord will deliver him that is spoiled 
out of the hand of the oppressor!" she exclaim- 
ed, adopting the phraseology of scripture. "He 
is against thee, oh inhabitant of the valley ! 



52 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



Go up to Lebanon, and cry; and lift up thy 
voice in Beshan. Wo be unto the pastors that 
destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture ! 
saith the Lord. Do no wrong, do no violence 
to the stranger, the fatherless" — and then she 
broke abruptly into a different strain. 

"Ah Dick, Dick, would that Enoch Heer- 
about were now living — he was a comely man, 
Dick, and would have been a good father to 
thee, and thou shouldst have borne his name, 
witch's son or no — those were brave days when 
Enoch came a-wooing : 



; Were he as poor as Job, 
And I in a royal robe — 
Made Lord of all the globe, 
He should be mine !" 



" It's a long day that has no sunset — the sun 
looks blood-red — what can that mean ?" she 
exclaimed, starting to the door and gazing with a 
wild and fixed eye upon the declining luminary, 
which was just wheeling its broad and lurid 
orb into the bosom of an oak forest that crown- 
ed a distant height. 

At that moment an ominous sound reached 
her ear —the long, shrill whistle of Dick Snik- 
kers or more properly Dick Heerabout, follow- 
ed by the tramp of horsemen and the hurtling, 
confused noise of a multitude drawing near. In 
an instant more, a large crowd of men, women, 
and children, appeared at the foot of the hill 
with fiery and eager faces turned towards her, 
and foremost among them she described Philip 
Brangle with two officers on horseback. The 
old woman stood rooted and motionless on the 
threshold, gazing down upon the populace with 
a look where madness and a certain native 
heroism of character mingled, partly in wrath, 
partly in scorn. For a moment the undaunted 
front and noble mien of the accused old woman 
held them silent and immoveable, but this feel- 
ing soon vanished. 

" Seize the hag !" cried Deacon Brangle, 
" tie her hand and foot — see if she will beard 
the vestry again !" 

At this order two muscular and fierce-looking 
men dismounted and led the way up the hill, 
followed by Brangle, who had cautiously thrown 
himself under the protection of this advanced 
body. As they approached the house Gatty 
Heerabout withdrew into the interior and they 
gained an entrance without opposition or diffi- 
culty. When they were within the apartment 
they discovered her standing erect in its ex- 
treme corner holding on high in one hand her 
bible, while the other was concealed in the 
folds of her garments; a fierce, supernatural 
fire kindling in her eyes. 

" Execute your warrant on her person !" For 
a moment they paused again until Deacon 
Brangle cried out, " Have her in custody forth- 
with. We must be before the justice ere sun 
down or we will have no hearing to day !" 

Thus urged on, the officers approached the 
supposed witch, and in an unguarded moment, 
while her eyes were turned thoughtfully on the 



setting sun, they sprang upon her and held her 
in a firm and apparently invincible gripe. 

" Once more vouchsafe thy strength," she 
exclaimed, after she had recovered from the 
sudden shock, casting her eyes toward heaven. 
" Once more only ! — Away, ye devils \" she 
shouted, exerting a giant's strength, casting the 
stout men from her like children — " I will ren- 
der my account to God!" And before they 
could recover their hold she had plucked a 
dagger from her girdle, plunged it hilt-deep 
into her bosom — so that its point pierced her 
heart — and she fell heavy and lifeless to the 
floor ! 

Balked of this victim, thus unexpectedly, 
Deacon Brangle, now gave orders for the ap- 
prehension of her accomplice, Richard Heer- 
about ; but he, who had disappeared during the 
confusion, was nowhere to be found, nor was 
he ever after seen or heard of in those bewitched 
and bloody regions ! 



DINNER TO THE 
HON. ABIMELECH BLOWER. 

It is a fact, I suspect by this time, pretty gen- 
erally circulated throughout Christendom, that 
when an American politician gets to be a great 
statesman ; when he has achieved fame for him- 
self and everlasting glory for his country, and 
when nothing more can be done to complete 

his renown, he takes his dinner ! When 

his constituents have heaped upon him every 
honor — elected him to the common council — 
the state legislature — and, finally, expanded 
him into that full-blown flower of human great- 
ness, a member of Congress — they express their 
incapacity for any further bestowal of dignities 
— their sense of the utter hopelessness of any 
higher elevation of the man in the esteem and 
admiration of the world, by furnishing him with 
as much roast-beef and salad as he can eat. 
Adroit rogues ! they manage to be present with 
the great man at this his public ordinary and 
masticating exhibition — though absent. 

His heavy constituent is served up by proxy, 
in a surloin ; his loquacious one in a calf's head ; 
and his busy, little, young admirer, the clerk 
or the jeweller's apprentice, in a dish of eels. 
His mechanical friend comes there in the guise 
of a stuffed, brown duck, with its back to the 
plate, sticking up its rough, hard web-feet, as 
if it would take him stoutly by the hand. Thus 
do his countrymen incorporate themselves with 
the mighty statesman, and enjoy the proximate 
delight of forming the future substance and 
bulk of their idol. 

The dinner to a great man is generally got 
up by two newspaper editors one lean man, with 
a long, sagacious nose, and a small boy. The I 
editors announce that " It is the intention of a 
large number of the constituents of the Honor- 
able Mr. to give a public dinner to that 



THE BLOWER DINNER. 



53 



vxeman, at the earliest opportunity." The long- 
nosed, lean man hires the room, and the small 
boy distributes circulars. 

A long-nosed lean man — two editors — and a 
small boy had performed their part of the busi- 
ness, and the Honorable Abilemech Blower 
was expected hourly by the afternoon boat, to 
partake of a public dinner. 

The newspapers were in an agony of an- 
nouncement and expectation ; the sun was on 
fire with impatience ; the streets were literally 
parched and thirsty with suspense. The ticket- 
holders assumed clean collars and handker- 
chiefs, and a crowd of anxious expectants was 
on the wharf straining their optic nerves and 
exhausting their nautical knowledge in deci- 
phering the craft that came up the bay, and 
distinguishing butter-sloops from steamboats. 
The study of river navigation seemed to have 
become an epidemic. 

Several times the crowd thought fit to throw 
itself into a state of intense and unnecessary 
excitement. 

"There she is — there's the Aurora High- 
flyer," said a large vagabond, who was burst- 
ing from every part of his dress, like an enor- 
mous monthly rose. 

" It is the Highflyer — Blower's in the High- 
flyer — I know the Highflyer by her pipe and 
the way she cuts the water — the committee 
engaged the Aurora Highflyer to bring on Blower 
and twelve baskets of Amboy oysters for the 
dinner !" 

The great vagabond had concluded his ex- 
planatory comments ; the mob stood with its 
nose in the air and its mouth agape, stretching 
forward to catch the first glimpse of the dis- 
tinguished member : the Aurora Highflyer was 
hidden from view by a brig which was sailing 
in the same direction and which kept such 
equal progress as to conceal it for more than 
ten minutes. 

When the brig had arrived nearly opposite 
the wharf; the supposed steamboat dropped 
behind her stern and a fellow in a hat-rim 
standing in her bows, bawled out, " Dash my 
vitals ! them chaps has come down to see the 
race! Moses and Melchizedec, who'd ha' 
thought it, Bill ?" This facetious personage, in 
the ardor of a very lively and agreeable fancy, 
supposed the crowd had collected to witness a 
match between his mud-scow and the brig Car- 
oline, which had been advertised in one of the 
penny papers ! 

At length the Aurora Highflyer did make 
herself apparent : the mob caught sight of a 
small man with a mysterious head, who very 
obligingly stood on the upper deck with his hat 
off making the most singular and condescending 
faces at a huge, wooden spile, and bowing 
obliquely toward the mob. 

The mob were, of course, excessively delight- 
ed and expressed their feelings as every well- 
trained mob does, by an extraordinary shout 
and a still more extraordinary exhibition of hats 
and caps. The great man landed. 
4 



The crowd grew more affectionate and ad- 
miring ; they pressed closer and closer. 

The committee were obliged every minute 
to exclaim, " for Heaven's sake, gentlemen ! 
don't — you'll crush Mr. Blower !" The great 
man was finally thrust into a hack — by a broad- 
handed member of the committee in so forcible 
a manner that he came very near going through 
the coach-window at the other side. 

A portion of the mob, apparently anticipating 
this movement, had planted itself on the oppo- 
site side of the hack, and obtaining a view of 
the countenance of the honorable M. C. as it 
bobbed that way, successfully executed three 
cheers in a masterly style ; the committee 
mounted in — the door closed, and the hack 
dashed up the street. When they arrived at 
the saloon, where the dinner was in waiting, 
they found the doors surrounded by a dense 
throng who had assembled to take measure of 
Mr. Blower's person with their eye and greet 
him with their most sweet voices. His foot 
had no sooner struck the pavement than a 'gen- 
eral "Hurrah for Blower!" split the air, and 
gave an old woman who was sitting in a 
window across the way, a very vivid idea of a 
small earthquake. " Nine cheers and an onion, 
for Blower !" shouted a discordant gentleman 
of the opposite politics. 

" Give him a smellin'-bottle — the little gen- 
tleman's a-fainting !" bawled a second, as Mr. 
Blower turned pale at the thought of forcing 
his way to the door through the well-packed 
mass of people. 

" Fan him with a chip !" cried a third. 

" Loosen his corsets !" shouted a forth. 

By dint of the active exertions of twelve po- 
lice-officers with heavy sticks, and four private 
friends of Mr. Blower, who marched before 
him kicking the mob on the shins, the Honora- 
ble Abimelech Blower was at length safely 
landed in the room provided for his reception, 
with the loss of only one gold key out of the 
bunch at the end of his watch-chain, and one 
committee-man, who swooned at the presenta- 
tion of a butcher-boy's fist directly under his 
nose, and was obliged to be carried home. 

Meantime the ticket-holders had rushed into 
the saloon, and organized themselves by calling 
a man with a small voice to the chair, and ap- 
pointing fourteen vice-presidents, each one of 
the fourteen having a pair of bushy whiskers, 
and a gold chain slung like a bandit's carbine- 
belt over his breast. Only a single difficulty 
arose in arranging the meeting to the entire 
satisfaction of every one in it, and that was 
simply that the room was intended to hold one 
hundred and fifty, and exactly three hundred 
purchasers of tickets were present. If they 
should attempt to foist off upon them the amount 
of dinner they were accustomed to serve up to 
the number which the room held alone, it was 
quite clear that some one hundred and fifty 
good manly voices would be raised to the tune 
of "Give me back my dollar!'' These three 
hundred gentlemen being concentrated in so 



54 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



moderate a space, it was rather difficult to de- 
cide by what process the Honorable Abimelech 
Blower was to be established in the chair left 
vacant for him at the right hand of the Presi- 
dent. In fact, this very question came up for 
discussion in the reception-room. 

A significant stamping, like that given at the 
theatre for the performers to come on, was 
heard from the saloon and considerably accel- 
erated the deliberations of the committee. 
Time was pressing. The dinner was spoiling. 
The Hon. A. Blower began to grow black in 
the face. A messenger was sent round to learn 
whether a passage could be made or obtained 
through the main entrance. He returned, and 
almost breathless with haste and horror, re- 
ported that the fat twins (two celebrated and 
eminent feeders) were at the door, clamoring 
to be admitted with their tickets. The com- 
mittee now began to despair, when a little 
man timidly suggested that Mr. Blower might 
be got in, if he would consent, under the stage 
by the way which the waiters adopted to hand 
up their wine to those on the platform. Two 
of the most influential members of the commit- 
tee ventured to break it to Mr. Blower. 

At first he was staggered, but recovering 
from the shock, and after a brief consultation 
with his appetite, he agreed to practise the 
device. 

A rumor now reached the saloon that Mr. 
Blower was approaching. The three hundred 
hungry gentlemen were awed into silence, 
and every eye was turned eagerly toward the 
door of the committee-room, when — unexpected 
vision — a head — a good sized Sphinx-like ora- 
cular head, was put out of a trap-door im- 
mediately behind the president's chair. As- 
tonishment seized the three hundred ticket- 
holders. The head smiled. It was conjectured, 
by some half dozen among the meeting, to be 
the head of the Honorable Abimelech Blower. 
The meeting shouted : the head smiled again. 
The meeting cheered ; the head was followed 
by a pair of spare withered legs, and the Honor- 
able Abimelech Blower stood before them. 

The committee under the platform hurraed 
and thumped the boards with their canes, as if 
they were overjoyed at its successful delivery 
of so great a birth. The rumbling noise under 
the stage and the sudden appearance of the dis- 
tinguished M. C. made it seem as if the earth 
had gaped like another whale, and cast up from 
its bowels a second Jonah : a very prophet. 

Now that Mr. Blower was duly installed in 
his place of honor, the dinner commenced after 
a vigorous fashion. Sundry gentlemen in the 
body of the saloon, appeared to adopt Mr. 
Blower's countenance as a sort of seasoning for 
their dishes ; for they stole a glance at his ex- 
pressive features and then took a mouthful ; a 
second glance, a second mouthful, and so on to 
the end of the course. It gave a relish to their 
viands. Mr. Blower, himself, fed in gallant 
style. About him in a semi-ciicle — a kind of 
reverential, Druid's stone-arrangeme-nt — the 



choicest dishes were assembled. A private letter 
had been addressed to him at Washington by a 
confidential friend to learn whether he pre- 
ferred fresh shad or trout : oysters pickled or 
in the stew, red pepper or black ; and also con- 
veying a general inquiry as to the game, wines, 
&c, which would be most agreeable. In reply 
he returned a double epistle written twice 
across giving full and explicit information. 
With that important state document in their 
hands, a committee of three had made a circuit 
of the markets, and been guided by it as strictly 
and peremptorily as its author professed to be 
by the sacred charter of the constitution. 

The tour of all these edibles Mr. Blower made 
with the solemnity and thorough self-devotion 
which befitted the occasion. In his victorious 
progress he spared no dish ; he entered into no 
truce or compromise with fish, flesh, or fowl ; 
he refused, with a sturdy love of self-enjoyment, 
to negotiate with anything that stood before 
him whatever winning shape it might assume. 

It was a glorious spectacle to behold Abime- 
lech Blower at his dinner. No wonder, three 
hundred human beings were willing to be pack- 
ed, like damaged dry goods, into a small saloon. 
No wonder they volunteered a dollar a piece to 
get in. No wonder they patiently endured the 
heat and suffocation — in truth, almost purgato- 
rial, of a close, narrow room ! Abimelech 
Blower at his dinner was a sight Jupiter might 
have left his thunder, and Bacchus his cups, to 
look upon. 

Extravagant and improbable as it may seem, 
the Honorable Abimelech Blower did at length 
finish his dinner — he absolutely brought it to a 
close ! The wine was then introduced. The 
President thereupon arose, and, in his peculiar- 
ly small voice, said that " he felt himself highly 
honored" — " Louder !" shouted an impudent 
fellow who had stolen an advance upon the 
meeting, of three glasses, " he felt himself 
highly honored in being the instrument to con- 
vey to that respectable and intelligent audience, 
a sentiment which he knew would meet a 
cordial response in the bosom of every gentle- 
man present. In presenting it, he should say 
no more than to simply add that the subject of 
it was a patriot, a scholar, an orator, and a citi- 
zen, unrivalled in the four quarters of the 
globe (cheers). As a patriot he had given 
his time to his country for the last twenty-five 
years, at the very moderate rate of eight dol- 
lars per day (enormous applause) ; as a scholar, 
his pamphlet on the Tonawonda system of cul- 
tivating the prairies had gained him immortal 
honor throughout the whole state of New York 
(ecstatic vociferations) ; as an orator, his great 
speeches on the Panama mission and on the 
question of conducting the debates in both 
houses of Congress in the Iroquois, have placed 
him in an enviable position before the world, 
beside Demosthenes and Cicero (hysterical hur- 
rahs) ; as a citizen, you all know him, and 
love to know that his manly form is the growth — 
a true native plant — of your own soil !" At 



THE BLOWER DINNER. 



55 



the close of this catalogue of Mr. Blower's ex- 
cellences irrepressible cheers broke out, like 
an erysipelas, all over the meeting. The na- 
tive plant, however, sat rooted to its chair, 
very quiet and self-composed under this pleasant 
irrigation ; or rather his face seemed to bud 
forth certain complacent smiles and twinklings 
which shot about his eyes and the corners of 
his mouth, like garden fire-works. 

" Gentlemen," continued the President in 
his small, small voice, " I have the honor to 
offer you, the Honorable Abimelech Blower. 
The phoenix of his party, he springs," "louder !" 
shouted the impudent fellow again, — " The 
phoenix of his party he springs," — " louder !" 
cried the inexorable, impudent man, " I can't," 
exclaimed the President, pale with smothered 
rage : nevertheless he proceeded, " he springs 
from the ashes of corruption which surround 
him, and, like Hercules tears his" (sh-i-r-t 
suggested the impudent, drunken man as the 
president paused in doubt over his paper) " his 
De-janeiras garment from him and springs into 
the flame to save his country." 

This admirable and explicit toast was re- 
ceived with unbounded demonstrations of ap- 
plause, and in about two minutes after they 
had subsided, the meeting took to their bottles 
and Mr. Blower to his legs. 

" Fellow-citizens," said he, calmly with- 
drawing a large bandanna from his left coat- 
pocket, " no event of my life is more gratifying 
to me than this reception : it is the proudest — 
the very proudest moment of my existence. 
The sentiment which you have had the kind- 
ness to receive so warmly — is only too compli- 
mentary, too flattering. To be a phoenix under 
any circumstances, gentlemen, must be highly 
gratifying to any man's feelings, but to be the 
phoenix of the party of which I am an humble 
advocate, is an honor too great — too over- 
whelming — for any human being. I thank you, 
Mr. President and fellow-citizens, for the kind 
compliment, I thank you with all my heart, 
and from the bottom of my heart — but I feel — 
I fear — I am not sure but that I am unworthy 
of the eulogy." He then proceeded to handle 
the allusion to Hercules in a similar manner, 
and in due time came to his system — the great 
system of which he was the father and promul- 
gator. " As to the system which I have had the 
honor to advocate, for the last three years — and 
which I have at length succeeded in carrying 
through both Houses of Congress by a triumphant 
majority (cheers) — I allude to the system of Short 
Commons (continued cheering) — the system 
which has routed beershops from the capitol and 
banished gingerbread establishments from the 
halls of legislation (vociferous applause) ; as to 
this system, gentlemen, which I victoriously 
brought to a third reading, and pushed to a suc- 
cessful decision after a hard-fought and exciting 
debate of two days and two nights — I shall not 
enter into its amazing results and consequences 
at the present time ! Its moral bearing upon the 
destiny of the world — its influence upon the 



business of Congress— and the support which it 
indirectly and collaterally lends to the consti- 
tution of the United States — are too obvious to 
require explanation." 

Here the fourteen vice-presidents sprang upon 
their legs in a body and cheered in magnificent 
style — a fat reporter in a small gallery behind 
the speaker grinned — the meeting clamorously 
hurraed — and an elderly gentleman who couldn't 
get a seat and wanted exercise, put his hat 
upon his cane and whirled it around in the air, 
in a most fascinating manner. 

" Mr. President, in urging this great measure 
upon Congress, I invoked the spirit of liberty 
to come to my aid — I felt it my duty to invoke 
that spirit ; I called upon the fathers of the 
Revolution to appear ' before me, to stalk forth 
in their grave-clothes upon the floor of the 
House and animate me in the glorious cause." 
At this moment a noise of cracked bells and 
harsh voices from without volunteered to mingle 
itself with the sound of the speaker's eloquence. 
" ' Appear before me,' I exclaimed," continued 
Mr. Blower, " ' ye heroes and sages, in your 
funeral shrouds and ghastly visages, and infuse 
the vigor of your presence into my bosom !' " 
A tumult was heard at the door — a slight crash, 
as if a panel or two were resigning their places 
in the door-frame — an officer's voice was raised 
in the uproar — and a dozen or two hard-featured 
fellows rushed in — followed by a miscellaneous 
throng. They distributed themselves quietly 
through the gallery, and the speaker, somewhat 
astonished at this rough parenthesis in the pro- 
ceedings — continued, suddenly abandoning the 
track of apostrophe, which he perhaps thought 
had been full speedily and promptly answered. 

" My learned friend," said he, smiling upon 
the small-voiced President, " has spoken of me, 
in terms of kind commendation, as a patriot, a 
statesman, and an orator. But, gentlemen, 
whatever gratification it may afford me to know 
that I have been able in my time and in the 
course of my life to render some service to my 
country in these capacities (" Cut that man's 
head off!" shouted the impudent man, who 
was in his fifth bottle) ; I feel — I know that 
my deepest source of satisfaction — that which 
gives me most consolation and solace, is that, 
amid all the corruptions and debaucheries of 
party, I have been enabled to sustain my purity 
and remain an honest man !" An uproar of ap- 
plause now burst from every quarter of the 
room, slightly seasoned and qualified however 
by the voice of a big, pale man in the gallery. 

"Pay me for them Wellingtons you've got 
on, Blower," shouted the big, pale man, who ap- 
peared to be a cobbler, from his complexion and 
the earnestness with which he demanded an 
equivalent for the nether integuments of Mr. 
Blower's person. 

'•The character of our country, fellow-oil i- 
zens," continued Blower again rapidly abandon- 
ing his train of remark to get on less perilous 
ground — "The character of our country has 
been to me a source of anxious attention." 



56 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



" I'd like to have you settle for those plushes 
and silk vesting !" modestly suggested a little 
tailor who was leaning over the railing. 

" This principle I brought from my cradle 
and shall carry to my grave — sustaining it here 
and everywhere while life is granted me." 

" Couldn't you arrange our small bill for 
groceries, Mr. Blower," shouted the impudent 
man, who proved to be the out-door partner of 
the firm of Firkin & Muzzy, retail grocers — 
" it's been running more than four years." 

This was too much for the admirers of the 
Hon. Abimelech Blower — " Turn him out — 
hustle him !" shouted fifty voices all at once. 

" Pass him down !" 

Now when it is considered that the doomed 
man had established himself in the remote up- 
per corner of the room, and that the door 
through which he was destined to make his exit 
was at the opposite extremity, it will be readily 
perceived how pleasant a prospect of travel Mr. 
Muzzy might reasonably indulge in. 

An assemblage of human beings is often com- 
pared to a sea. 

Boisterous and dreadful, indeed, was the 
ocean on which the ill-fated Muzzy was now 
embarking. God assoil thee, poor man ! if 
thou passest safe through yonder narrow straits, 
ycleped the outer door. 

" Pass him down !" shouted a dozen voices 
at the lower end of the room. 

In a trice, the call was answered by the sud- 
den elevation of Mr. Muzzy some six feet in 
the air. Being let down by this billow he fell 
into a horrible vortex of stout-handed men, who 
whirled him round and round, and then yielded 
him to the current which set toward the door. 
He next struck in a gulf-stream of muscular fel- 
lows, who hurried him forward at something 
like fifteen knots an hour. Thus he pitched 
from one raging wave to another, sometimes 
being borne toward the right wall and some- 
times toward the left, as the fanciful humor of 
the channel varied. Sometimes he landed 
among a party of quiet, elderly gentlemen over 
their wine, where he rested a moment, as it 
were, between two breakers, and looking around 
him with pallid visage, thought the tempest was 
past. In a second, the gale would spring afresh, 
and he would be clutched up, and vexed dread- 
fully between two tides which both set against 
him with rapacious fury. At length he was 
caught up by a mighty billow, in the shape of 
two master bakers and a brewer, and dashed 
through the dangerous gut toward which he 
had been making such perilous progress. On 
taking an observation, he discovered that he 
was stranded on the curbstone, with his tim- 
bers considerably loosened and his rigging 
damaged. In fact, he found himself in a round 
jacket (instead of a long tail dress coat, in 
which he had entered) and frightened half out 
of his wits. Without stopping to fabricate any 
moral reflections on the event or to calculate 
the extent of his loss, he made a very rapid 
pair of legs down the street. 



The Honorable Mr. Blower resumed, and con- 
tinued, without further interruption, to entertain 
the assemblage with an able and eloquent address 
in which the words — my country — patriotism — 
our free institutions — (three cheers) — down to 
our posterity — received from our ancestors — 
(applause) — humble advocate — public career— 
the constitution — the glorious constitution — (six 
cheers) — enemies of human freedom trampled 
under foot — (nine cheers) — occurred at regular 
intervals, variegated with allusions to the per- 
sonal determination of the speaker to stand by 
his principles, and all that. The honorable 
gentleman sustained an even flight of this kind 
for about two hours, during which the fat re- 
porter in the small gallery took the liberty to 
cultivate his somnolent powers, with no despic- 
able degree of vigor and enthusiasm. 

Mr. Blower was proceeding to introduce his 
peroration, with nine apostrophes to liberty, 
and four distinct and astounding interrogato- 
ries to the crowned heads of Europe, when sud- 
denly, and without notice, the gas-lights extin- 
guished themselves in a body. Upon this, sev- 
eral clear and musical yells were raised by the 
hard-featured gentlemen in the gallery, and in- 
numerable missiles began to be distributed pret- 
ty freely through the saloon. From the num- 
ber that reached the Honorable Abimelech 
Blower, that gentleman formed a sudden con- 
ception that he was becoming the general cen- 
tre of attack, and that the whole meeting had 
risen to a man and was bestowing its favors up- 
on his person. 

The committee having likewise arrived at 
a somewhat similar conclusion, they thought it 
came within their powers to smuggle the per- 
son of Mr. Blower through the door in the plat- 
form, and they accordingly did so, with such a 
degree of precipitancy as to draw the port -wine- 
colored coat which he had on, entirely over his 
majestic features. The small- voiced president 
they threw in to make sure that all was packed 
snug below. The rioters not having learned 
the abduction of the Honorable gentleman, con- 
tinued to play their missiles toward the spot 
which he was supposed to be occupying, until, 
at length, a misdirected bottle struck the fat re- 
porter directly upon the nape of the neck, and 
sent him home to write out the speech he had 
and had not heard — to say that, " everything 
went off in capital style" — that " the address 
of the Hon. Mr. Blower was brilliant and thril- 
ling, and surpassed all his previous masterly ef- 
forts" — and to have a mustard plaster applied 
to his occiput ! Champaigne-bottles, wine-glas- 
ses, and broken noses, were meantime dealt 
about with the most astonishing prodigality, in 
the body of the saloon, till daylight looked in at 
the windows — when the survivors adjourned. 

Two of the committee of reception, who had 
become personally responsible for the bills, on 
looking over the account which was handed in 
the next morning, and in which " to breakage" 
doz. champaigne-glasses ; doz. wine- 
bottles (best green glass) ; fifty window-lights ; 



THE DRUGGIST'S WIFE. 



57 



gas-fixtures ; one large chandelier (entirely de- 
stroyed figured conspicuously— and on receiv- 
ing a note from the fat reporter, stating that he 
should immediately commence an action of dam- 
ages for the " disablement of two arteries and 
one spinal marrow," unless some satisfactory 
arrangement was made — absconded. 

When it is suggested that they left behind 
them two tailor's bills — a running account with 
a butcher and baker a-piece — and no chattels, 
real or personal, save two or three walking- 
sticks and seven small children, it will be at 
once conjectured how enchanting a prospect 
there was of these new demands being met by 
cash payments ! 



THE DRUGGIST'S WIFE. 

Harvey Lamb was a poor druggist in the 
city. He was very poor — his life ebbed on in a 
meager channel, with a scanty tide that barely 
kept him from sinking. He was not born poor, 
nor had he become poor through unthrift or im- 
providence, but by one mischance and another 
— a misfortune — a loss at seaman unexpected 
turn of events, he had been gradually brought 
down the fair mountain-side, into the low vale 
of sorrowful and barren poverty where he now 
dwelt. Whatever of flickering splendor — of 
past pomp or glory of condition had been left to 
him after all this, sickness, like a hard creditor, 
had stepped in, and with her pale, slow, but 
inevitable hand, swept from the stage. The 
lights were extinguished — the curtain was torn 
down — the scenery (which, in truth, had been 
to him scarcely more than imaginary) — the fairy 
coloring and decoration of his boyhood, were 
vanished from his view. He was very poor, 
but not without consolation. His treasury of 
mere money, it is true, was exhausted — but 
there was one that presided over the exchequer 
whose resources scarce ever ran low. Fancy, 
a true poet's fancy, made a noble mistress of 
the mint. She was ever ready to meet his de- 
mands — smilingly to give him bills and drafts 
(such as they were) upon the future. It was 
sufficient luxury for Harvey Lamb to live un- 
der the bounty of this generous dispenser. Grant 
him but life — life in its poorest, frailest form — 
and the free indulgence of his fanciful humor, 
and he was content. In the dungeon or the 
prison he would have slept at ease — give but 
fancy, sweet, radiant creature, for his jailer ! 
He would ask no wider limits than she could 
grant. 

He was very poor — but he had a faithful, 
fond wife. Mary Lamb was all that the wife 
of such a man should be. She was not a copy 
of her husband in every quality ; her faculties 
were not necessarily matched, head and head 
with his. On the contrary, Mary Lamb, was, 
as it were, a continuation of Harvey Lamb — 



a pleasant supplement, almost equalling in 
value the original volume itself — in which, 
whatever was dark in the first, was cleared up — 
whatever obscure, expounded — whatever weak, 
strengthened and sustained. She was just what 
a wife should be— not a rival to her husband — 
for that would be harsh and unmeet — a source 
of jarring discords and unfriendly sounds — but 
a sweet possessor of other powers — some light- 
er, some deeper — by which the double joy — the 
twin being of wedded life, was made complete. 
Oh ! what a blessing is poverty, to spirits like 
these ! It wrought upon them its triumphant 
miracles. It revealed to them the great secret 
how all-in-all two beings may be to each other, 
when they become nothing to the world, and 
the world is nought to them ; for poverty, like 
fame, holds a trumpet in her hand, and with it 
summons from the breast the noblest strength 
and kindliest feeling of our nature. From 
the deep places of the heart, great emotions — 
heaven-like attachments, come flocking to the 
call of its sad music, like sea-nymphs from the 
vast ocean, at the sound of " Triton's wreathed 
horn." 

Harvey Lamb, with his wife, lived in an ob- 
scure street, in a single, small room, in the 
front of which he kept his little shop— a scanty 
assortment of drugs and vials. This was their 
only source of revenue. The business which 
was there carried on was of the most trifling 
sort ; a fanciful old neighbor would now and 
then send over for a pennyworth of saffron for 
her canary-bird ; or a dry, shrug-shouldered 
Frenchman, up the street, would send down for 
a little brimstone for his dog — or, heaviest of 
his professional undertakings, he would be 
called upon to bleed an apoplectic alderman, 
who lived round the corner, fronting the square. 
Thus year after year passed away. Harvey 
Lamb heard the din and tumult of the money- 
making world, but remained unmoved. Strange 
man ! he saw the rich merchant crash by in his 
equipage, his face all wrinkled with care, and 
erect with importance — and yet felt no ambi- 
tion to take the road for wealth, to pant upon the 
course for the prize of plate ! 

Poor fool ! he sat behind his counter scrib- 
bling poetry or dreaming it. 

At length Harvey Lamb was taken sick. At 
first it was mere weakness ; but in a short time 
it assumed the pale-red guise of a decline. He 
was brought to his bed and bound there by the 
disease; and yet it was wonderful how fancy 
still held her sway — wearing her crown of flow- 
ers, and waving her ivied sceptre wiih the same 
galliard and daring air as in his hour of perfect 
health. His thoughts ran more sparkling than 
ever; his dreams were more populous with gold- 
en creatures ; his visions came to him freight- 
ed more and more with the perfume of the pleas- 
ant world of faery. 

"Mary," said he, one morning to his wife, 
who stood by his bedside, ministering to his ill- 
ness — "Mary, 1 shall leave >ou no child as a 
legacy by which to ivineml>cr me ! When I de- 



58 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



part, you will be alone in the world — alone, 
without friend or comforter !" 

" Oh ! talk not so, my dear husband ! talk 
not so ; you are child and father to me now, 
and I trust will remain so, ever and ever while 
we are on earth. Tinge not your thoughts, my 
dear Harvey, with these sad colors of death!" 
She sank upon his face, and, bestowing on his 
lips a fervent kiss, she sat down in a chair and 
wept. 

"This is folly, Mary," answered her hus- 
band, "utmost folly. I fear not death, why 
should you ? Nothing can be pleasanter and 
sweeter than death. To lie down in a retired, 
country grave-yard, in a cheerful sleep, like 
that which the violets enjoy before they show 
their glad, fragrant faces upon the earth ; to lis- 
ten with a calm ear — if the dead may listen — 
to the thousand busy sounds that nature makes 
along the round surface of the globe ; to heark- 
en to these — the faint, gentle whisper of the 
spring grass, as it first shoots from the mould 
(noise heard only by dead and immortal beings) 
— the rustling of the lark's wings as he takes 
his morning farewell of the earth — the snake's 
gliding noise, — the crickets chirp — the foun- 
tain's bubbling harmony — these are the enter- 
tainments provided for us in our last home ! 
Blessed — thrice-blessed tenement !" 

" Long, long may it be ere you remove from 
this home to that — dingy though it be !" sobbed 
his wife, taking him by the hand, and gazing 
earnestly and kindly in his face. 

" Oh, Mary, fear not," he replied, " I shall 
visit you again. When I have left the flesh, 
nothing will please me more, as a disembodied 
spirit, than to revisit my old haunts and my 
old friends. I shall come back, you may be 
sure, to see how you bear your widowhood. I 
shall look into the money-drawer, and learn if 
it has grown heavier or lighter since I left. You 
must leave the old, dark sign, with my name on 
the door, Mary, so that I can find the shop !" 

" You are talking wildly, I fear, my dear hus- 
band !" said his wife, who, in spite of her rea- 
son, was carried along on the stream of his fast- 
flowing fancies. 

" It will be so, it will be so," he continued, 
" I shall come back to see whether you grow 
old and sorrowful when I am away — to learn 
how time passes with you. I shall visit you in 
spring, for that is your cheerfullest season of 
the year. You must be in a joyous mood, so 
that I can tell how near like heaven a pleasant 
face may make a little corner of the earth like 
this — look ! — I shall return to find how our lit- 
tle neighbor improves with his violin ; whether 
Mrs. Pegg's canary has got well of his new, 
everlasting cold — and to learn whether the moss, 
in the eaves of the house, preserves its green 
old youth as fresh as ever !" 

Thus, the sick man kept climbing an endless 
Jacob's-ladder, building pile of fancies upon 
pile, and descending each time, as it were, with 
a face glowing with the hues of one who had 
for a while breathed a heavenlier climate, and 



enjoyed a nearer access to the mysteries of the 
life that is to come. 

The next day after this, it was evident that 
the disease was beginning to triumph over his 
frame. He refused to allow a physician to be 
summoned. He wished to die in peace, with 
none to look upon his face but his fond wife, 
and no face to mar the quiet scene of departure 
but hers. When the discovery of the fatal 
character of his illness first broke upon her 
mind, she was overwhelmed. For a time she 
was stunned — and then, almost frantic with 
sorrow. But she* was unwilling that one so 
near and dear to her should leave the world be- 
holding her agony and distress. She would not 
disquiet his last moment (if she could) with a sin- 
gle uneasy or repining thought. 

She restrained her grief and listened in si- 
lence, as her dying husband spoke of the part- 
ing which he felt to be near at hand. 

" Mary," said he, looking fondly, and with a 
melancholy smile upon his wife — "Mary, I hear 
the bell tolling for the departure of a poor man. 
For a day there will be a black thought upon 
the memories of a few kindly neighbors — my 
gravestone, as the newest in the yard, will be 
read for a week or so — and I shall have closed 
all my account with the world !" 

As he spoke, a long, lean, spectral cat glided 
in at the door, and the sound of children at play 
upon the walk, came in through the opening — 
and the beat of a drum, rumbling in a far-off 
street, was faintly heard. 

" I will close the door," said Mary, rising to 
accomplish her purpose. 

" No, no," said he, " let me hear the sound 
of human voices. Let me have all the stir of 
life without, in its most joyous noises, as I 
leave ; for where I go I shall find them all, on- 
ly in purer and gayer shapes. Throw open the 
door, and the casement too, my dear, I wish to 
look upon the flowers in the window across the 
way." 

She stepped to the casement to gratify the 
dying man's wish — she lifted the window half- 
way up — heard a faint sigh — and turning, found 
herself a lone widow in the desolate chamber ! 

That same day, toward the evening, Mrs. 
Lamb had been seen leaving the shop, with her 
bonnet and shawl. That night passed, and she 
returned not. A poor boy, living in the neigh- 
borhood, had closed the doors, and put up the 
shutters of the shop windows. The next day 
passed away, and the next, and no tidings were 
heard of the absent woman. On the third day 
it chanced that an uncle of Harvey Lamb had 
come into town from the country, and calling 
at his drug store was astonished to find it closed, 
and an air of gloom hanging about it and the 
whole street. When he learned that Harvey 
Lamb was indeed dead, he was still more aston- 
ished, no word of his illness having ever reach- 
ed his ears before. 

And now that the sad story was told, in all 
its completeness, his duty was clear. He had 
the body properly prepared and provided with 



THE DRUGGIST'S WIFE. 



59 



a coffin, and, departing, look it with him into 
the country to lay it in his old, ancestral grave- 
yard, beside his mother, his sister, and his little 
brother, that had died many, many years ago. 

On the Sunday of the next week, Mary Lamb 
returned, her hair dishevelled, her dress soiled, 
and her face haggard with fatigue, hunger, and 
exposure. To many questions she answered 
not a word ; but entering the house, and finding 
the corpse removed, she gave one loud, piercing 
shriek, and with a small bundle of clothes in 
her hand, again departed. Choosing a street 
which led directly into the suburbs of the town, 
she hurriedforward as if some matter of life 
and death hung upon her steps. 

Crowds of people were on their way to church, 
and as she mingled with the stream and passed 
on, every eye was turned upon her in pity and 
wonder. Some of the more thoughtful and com- 
passionate would have stopped her, and inquired 
into her trouble and suffering ; but there was 
that of wildness and mad resolve about her 
look, which too plainly told that she would 
not be questioned, or that questioning would 
be fruitless. 

The next morning she was seen crossing the 
fields beyond the skirts of the city, having passed 
the night God only knows where ! Alas ! how 
many poor wretches are there who appear in the 
morning and disappear at night-fall, whose hours 
of rest and slumber go by in unknown and piti- 
less places ! How many to whom the sun seems 
to be their only friend, and who skulk away 
when he has set — care-worn, heart-broken — 
and hide themselves in haunts which the wild 
beast itself would shun ! 

Early spring was beginning to gladden the 
earth, but the poor, desolate woman walked on, 
taking no heed of the sweet-scented buds that 
smiled forth along the road, upon which she 
was now travelling. 

She had left the beaten turnpike for a mo- 
ment, and taken the high bank which skirted 
close to the fence, and was strolling along the 
foot-path when she saw two or three boys in a 
tree over the stone wall, fixing a bird-cage among 
its branches. Getting over, she came under the 
tree, and exclaimed, looking into the face of a 
smiling little boy — the youngest of the three — 

" Can you tell me, child, where Harvey 
Lamb was buried ?" 

The little boy instantly came down, and going 
up to the questioner, took her hand and said, 
" No, ma'am, but grandfather is buried over in 
that orchard ;" and the child turned and point- 
ed to a gravestone in the far part of the orchard, 
a tear starting meanwhile into his sad little 
blue eyes. 

" But Harvey Lamb's grave, — child, I must 
find that !" 

" Grandfather's grave is the only one near 
here," replied the boy. " He died before mother 
and sister and my two aunts — so he lies all 
alone over in the field.". 

The little boy's genuine kindliness had won 
the poor widow's heart and drawing him to her 



bosom, she gave him a fond embrace, and wept 
warm tears to think that no such blessed pledge 
had been ever granted to her. 

" There's a graveyard by the church, good 
woman," said the boy, in answer to a second 
question of Mary Lamb, " come, I'll show you, 
ma'am, it's only up the road a little ways." 

Saying this, the child took her again by the 
hand — led her through the bars (which he let 
down) into the road, and up the road they 
journeyed about half a mile, when they turned 
down a lane, and in a moment more were in 
sight of the tombstones of a country church- 
yard. It stood upon a point of land around 
which a calm current flowed, lending to the 
neighboring graves a type of that rest which 
none but the dead can know. 

The little boy threw open the graveyard 
gate, and exclaiming, " The sexton's in there 
now, digging a grave for old Billy !" scampered 
off back to his companions. 

As Mary Lamb entered the burial-place, she 
heard a voice, apparently issuing directly from 
the bosom of the earth, singing — 



" Care not I 
How deep they lie — 

Five feet or five feet ten. 
They've served their time upon the earth : 
They've had their wedding and their birth ; 
Their frolic, holiday and mirth : 
They'll serve their time below. 
Care not I 
How deep they lie." 

On approaching the particular spot from 
which it seemed to bubble up, and looking down 
into a pit some four feet deep, she beheld a 
little, bald-headed man, with his jacket off, 
toiling away, like a mole, in the earth. 

" Can you tell me where Harvey Lamb is 
buried ?" said the widow, asking her perpetual 
question. 

" Not in my yard !" answered the little sex- 
ton gruffly, not deigning to look up. 

" Pray, sir, can't you tell me where Harvey 
Lamb's grave is ?" persevered the poor woman, 
something betraying itself in her tone which 
touched the little sexton's feelings. 

" There's no Lambs buried in my yard," an- 
swered he ; " nor there hasn't been a Lamb 
laid in, since old Billy Hubbard's father's grave 
was dug, and that was the first grave that was 
ever made here. And now I am making a house 
for old Billy No. 2— old Billy's son. They was 
very quarrelsome in their lives, but now they're 
a-going to lay next to each other, as quiet as 
young sparrows. Death's a mighty leveller, 
madam," said the little sexton sentcntiously, 
now, for the first time, looking up. 

" Gracious, my dear," exclaimed the grave- 
digger, as his eye fell upon the trouble-worn 
and mournful features of the poor widow, " you 
look very pale. Have you lost any dear friend / 
Old Billy's no kin, I hope : if so, 1 beg your 
pardon." By this time he had lifted himself 
out of the unfinished grave. " Come along 



60 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



with me, whose grave was it you wanted to 
find ?" 

" Harvey Lamb's.'*' 

" Harvey Lamb's — some old uncle or ances- 
tor's, I suppose," continued the garrulous and 
really good-humored little sexton. "Come 



and entering it through the gate, began her 
customary examination of the head-stones, sit- 
ting upon the green graves and reading the in- 
scriptions, while her face was pale and flushed 
by turns as hope or fear predominated. 

She had .at length grown weary and, for a 



along— my wife may be can help you— she's moment pausing from her task, sat down under 
kepi 3 a book of all the deaths and burials in ; the fence and commenced chanting, 
these parts for twenty-years, beginning with 
old Daniel Hubbard (Billy's father), and run- 



' In the cold earth my love lies cold : 
Oh tell me gently where he lies 1 

Is it beneath a flowerless turf— 
Or do the blue-bells' smiling eyes 
Spread o'er his grave their cheerful dyes ? 

Where buttercups in golden colors glow 
There lies my love asleep. 

Lie still, my love ! and till I come, • 
A calm, unbroken slumber keep ! " 



It chanced, while she was singing, that theru 



ning down to an unweaned babe that died this 
morning of a small brain fever. Come along." 

Across the disordered mind of Mary Lamb a 
hope now gleamed, that she might be able to 
find the object of her painful search — the grave 
of her husband. She was received very kindly 
by the sexton's wife, who, when she learned 
the melancholy nature of the poor woman's 

visit, immediately produced a soiled old blank- | was another person in the farther part of the 
book, which she handed to her visiter. j graveyard — a venerable old quaker, who had 

Eagerly was it seized by the anxious woman, ; come "there to visit the grave of an only daugh- 
and hastily was it examined. " There's no j ter, that had been buried the day before. The 
such name" there !" said she, giving it back to ' plaintive voice of Mary Lamb reached his ear. 
the sexton's wife, with a tone and look as if « Daughter, why dost thou weep ?" said the 
her very heart was breaking. " It's not there — J old man, approaching her. " I have cause to 
I must begone on my business." She would j mourn, for I have lost my only child — my dear, 
have immediately gone forth and perilled the j sweet Anna, the stay and comfort of my old 

age — but wherefore dost thou, so young and so 



exposures and the damp and the darkness of 
another night spent in the cold air, had not 
the good old couple entreated her, with almost 
tears in their eyes, to stay with them until the 
morning at least. She did at length — taking 
her evening meal with them — and enjoying a 
slumber (broken indeed with strange images 
and phantasies of the brain) under their roof — 
but when the morning came she was up and 
had stolen away before any one was stirring of 
the sexton's household. 

Day after day did Mary Lamb ramble over 
the country, putting to even" one her constant 
question. The death's bolt which had stricken 
down her husband, had pierced her heart be- 
yond all remedy. From the moment when she 
had found herself a widow in the silent cham- 
ber, thought, reason, and restraint, seemed to 
have abandoned her — desolate as she was be- 
fore. The husband that she loved appeared to 
be ever gliding before her, beckoning her for- 
ward with a shadowy hand, and with that pale, 
sad look which was upon him when he died — 
upon the pilgrimage she had begun. Onward 



lovely, weep ?" 

Mary lifted her eyes, and answered him with 
her customary old question, " Can you tell me 
where Harvey Lamb is buried ?" 

"It was of him, then, daughter, that thy 
verses spake ! Lamb — Harvey Lamb — there are 
none of that name buried here ; but, let me 
consider — there was a Lamb buried somewhere 
lately. Oh ! it was over at Mount Pleasant ! a 
young man, I think, brought from the city — 
there was a strange story told of him." 

" It was my husband — my dear, dear hus- 
band !" cried the widow. "It was Harvey — 
he came from Mount Pleasant — strange that I 
never thought of it before, was it not ?" 

This was the first time that the idea of her 
husband's being buried among his fathers had 
crossed her bewildered mind, and she would 
have set out for the spot at once, had not the 
old quaker delayed her almost by force, and in- 
sisted upon her going home with him, and ta- 
king rest and food. 

It was in the close of the afternoon, and the 



she rambled with hasty steps — making herself ! sky began to be overcast. In a few moments, 



familiar with the names of the dead in every 
village and country church-yard, and perusing 
the silent pages on which their departure was 
recorded with a mournful eagerness. 

Sometimes, in the different parts of the coun- 
try she had visited, a rumor prevailed that a 
mad woman had broken into a church and car- 
ried off the sexton's register. At others, that a 
wild female had been seen strolling about the 
fields, or sitting under the trees, earnestly pe- 
rusing papers which she held in her hand, or 
tearing them piecemeal and scattering them 
along the lanes and highways. 

One day she came to a quaker place of burial, 



Mary Lamb and her companion were within 
his dwelling, just as the first drops of the show- 
er pattered upon the door-steps. The benevo- 
olent old quaker introduced her to his wife, and 
they sat down to the evening meal. The meal 
was finished, and Mary said that she felt wea- 
ried, and wished to lie down. The old quaker's 
wife thereupon conducted her up stairs, and led 
her into a neat, clean room, furnished with a 
bed, every appointment of which was as fresh 
as April snow. Bidding her a kind good-night, 
the quaker ess withdrew. She had no sooner 
left the apartment, than Mary Lamb slipped on 
her bonnet — cautiously opened the door — and, 



N. A. SOCIETY FOR IMPOSTUKE. 



gliding gently down stairs, stole out of a side- There, for a long time, she lay senseless, 
door which led into the garden, and hastily sur- At length a passer-by entered the graveyard, 
mounting the garden fence, found her way into and looking into her face— for she had raised 
the open fields. herself, by a convulsive effort, upon her knees, 
The ram was falling in torrents— and a cold, and turned it toward the inscription— with her 
damp, dreary night was before the wander- hands firmly clasped— he found that she was, 
er. Broad flashes of lightning glared over the in truth, dead ! Her heart had broken in de- 
whole western horizon, and the thunder boomed lirious joy at the fulfilment of her hope; and 
and beUowed fearfully along the sky. Now and she knelt 'before the plain, homely gravestone, 
then a peal would begin far off, and rolling like a devotee at the shrine of his saint. With 
nearer and nearer with a heavy sound, as if a many tears for her sorrow and her beauty, they 
great chariot were driven across the heavens, laid her beside the husband of her youth': 
burst with awful distinctness directly over the ! 
head of the lonely woman. A deluge of rain j 
followed every discharge, and beat upon her 



person with pitiless strength. 

Nevertheless, she steadily pursued her course. 
She had, at length, rambled into a portion of the 
country with which her childhood had been fa- 
miliar. She knew every road, and turnpike, and 
bypath, as well as if she had travelled them 
but yesterday, and thus was enabled to make 
rapid progress on her perilous adventure. Thus 
for many hours she kept on, despite the rain, 
the lightning, and the horrid thunder. Nothing 



THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF 
THE N. A. SOCIETY FOR THE 
ENCOURAGEMENT OF IMPOS- 
TURE. 

The friends of the N. A. Society for the En- 
couragement of Imposture mustered in strong 
was before and around her but the darkness, force at the Chapel gates at ten, on a fine Mon- 
and yet a great, an animating, and liberal hope day morning, in the month of April. It was de- 
lured her on. Friendless and storm-beaten, lightful to see the number of sharp, shrewd 
she pursued her dangerous path, without fear, faces that pressed for the doors the moment 
without misgiving or doubt. She was not alone they were opened. There was a stamp on al- 
— though she seemed to be — for that shadow}- most every countenance that proclaimed its 
form, which had been the guide of her pilgrim- owner a stanch, true friend of the cause whose 
age, was with her still, and with its sweet, sad first anniversary was about to be celebrated 
face, invited her forward and encouraged every within. 

step. God bless thee, noble woman! for there The chair was taken by " our esteemed and 
will be an end to the weary journey — strange respected fellow-citizen" Mr. Solomon Chalker, 
— mournful — but lovely and touching. whose long, saint-like visage is pretty general- 
Morning at last broke upon her path. The ly familiar to the community, and, in fact, im- 
storm had passed away, and the cheerful face pressed upon the memories of many of them, so 
of nature was before her. The sky sparkled thoroughly blended and associated with keen 
above her head with a clear brilliancy, as if it bargains and certain sly tricks of trade, that it 
had been purified by the flood that had descend- might fairly be considered a stereotype. "When 



ed. Tree and verdure, bird and blossom, bathed 
in the shower, assumed a new color of vigor- 
ous and pleasant spring-time youth. 

The genial rays of the sun shot through the 
air, and made the atmosphere soft and balmv. 



Mr. Chalker deposited his person in a chair 
upon the platform, a murmur of applause arose 
from the assembly. In a few brief words he 
expressed his thanks for the distinguished honor 
the board of managers of the N. A. E. I. So- 



operating like a well-tempered bath upon the ciety had conferred upon him, in calling him to 
limbs, and bracing the traveller for her journey, preside over their deliberations. 
With the new aspect of the morning, a bright- Still deeper was his pleasure, still higher his 
ness had come over the spirit of the poor widow, gratification, in occupying the chair in the pres- 
and she hastened on her way with a speed that ence of an audience so remarkable for their 
seemed every moment to increase. She reached intelligence, their integrity, and their respecta- 
a road along which she had often trodden to ,'bility, as he had no doubt was the one before him ! 
school in her girlish prime of life;, she saw the \ He should endeavor to conduct the proceed-; 
old school-house, and her heart beat with many ings of the day temperately, firmly, and in such 
fond remembrances. She came in sight of her a manner as he hoped would meet the approval 
own mother's house, where she had been wooed \ of the audience, the members of the society, and 



and won by the lover of her youth ; her emo- 
tions were almost too great to bear. 

She flew past it ! She readied the old <;rave- 
yard— hastily and tremblingly she entered its 
sacred domain. Her eye fell upon a newlv 
erected gravestone bearing the name of 1 1 
Lamb. It was his — her own dear husband's! 
She fell down upon the earth and wept 



the board of managers. 

During the delivery of this address (which 
W«8 received with flattering demonstrations), 
the chairman kept his two hands sturdily thrust 
into his side-pockets — apparently to be SSf 
tha( his finances were in due order and safety — 
and a very judicious disposition of lux hands 
-. considering .the company he v 



62 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



He was surrounded by the board of managers 
themselves. At times, too, a soft sound was 
heard issuing from the mouth of his pocket, like 
the noise of metals clashing and jingling togeth- 
er, as if to keep the audience advised that the 
speaker was a respectable man, and well-to-do 
in the world ! Mr. Chalker arose a second time 
and stated that the first annual report would 
be immediately read by the corresponding sec- 
retary, Mr. Boerum. Mr. Boerum accordingly '. 
dislodged himself from a high-backed chair, and 
exhibited to the meeting a short man, with a 
heavy, solemn countenance, and unrolling a 
bundle of papers, satisfactorily established, the 
moment he opened his lips that he had a voice, 
whose tones could roll like low, distant thun- : 
der — growling and muttering over the heads of 
the audience. The board of managers instant- 
ly cast themselves into attitudes of profound at- 
tention, both hands griping their knees, and 
their ears turned obliquely toward the corre- 
sponding secretary — as if they had not heard the 
report read over by that identical pair of lips 
twelve distinct times ! 

REPORT. 

The Board of Managers of the North Ameri- 
can Society for the Encouragement of Imposture, 
in presenting to you this, their first Annual Re- 
port, can not but be devoutly thankful for the 
degree of success which has attended their la- 
bors during the past year. The board of man- 
agers at a recent meeting resolved u That the 
prosperity which, notwithstanding contending 
difficulties, has characterized the society, affords 
encouragement to prosecute its objects with in- 
creasing energy." Before we proceed to speak 
of the various efforts which have been made to 
promote the cause, your board can not but ad- 
vert with pleasure to the spirit of harmony that 
has pervaded the different friends of imposture 
in every quarter. The conduct of the retail 
dry-goods dealers during the past twelve months 
has been highly cheering and refreshing. They 
have sold, as appears by statistics in the hands 
of your recording secretary, during that compar- 
atively brief space of time, no less than twelve 
thousand common ten-dollar red shawls at twen- 
ty-five dollars a-piece, as actual merinoes ! In ad- 
dition to this, they have disposed of two hundred 
and fifty pieces of sky-blue homespun as sea- 
green broadcloth, by the proper arrangement of 
the light in the back part of their stores ! 

Furthermore, so thoroughly have they been 
animated by the great principles of this society, ' 
they have within the last three months, by unan- ' 
imous consent, reduced the yard measure anoth- [ 
er inch, so that their customers are now fur- 
nished with thirty-four inches for a yard instead j 
of thirty-five, as had been the practice for 
some years past ! The consequences of this 
measure, in the opinion of your board, can not 
be too eagerly and enthusiastically anticipated. 
It is destined to create an entire revolution in 
the manners of the community ! The male mem- 



bers of it, instead of walking about our streets 
in those extravagant, long-tailed coats and flow- 
ing pantaloons, will now, by this dexterous 
change of measurement, be reduced to small- 
clothes ! And the female portion, who have 
been so long habituated to fifteen yards per 
dress, will now be forced to exhibit their well- 
turned ankles and snow-white bosoms to the 
gaze of the world in fourteen yards and a quar- 
ter, short measure ! Your board are very hap- 
py to be able to state, that this movement of the 
retail dry-goods dealers has been cordially met 
and responded to by the merchant-tailors and 
mantuamakers. No resistance to this whole- 
some innovation has been made from that quar- 
ter ; on the contrary, they have given it their 
hearty and emphatic co-operation. The former, 
as soon as they learned this important move- 
ment on the part of their brethren, immediately 
enlarged their cabbage-holes ; and the latter, 
the lady mantuamakers, such of them as were 
single, were instantly married, and made prepa- 
ration for two girls a-piece, to be dressed in 
such fashionable silks as their customers may 
furnish during the next eighteen months ! 

The shoemakers throughout the city, and, as 
far as has been heard from, throughout the 
State, your board have been gratified to learn, 
adhere with praiseworthy tenacity to their old 
and established habit of delivering their fabrics 
(such as boots and shoes) precisely two weeks 
after the time promised ! While these particu- 
lar cases have afforded to your board subjects 
of the most lively contemplation, they have been 
pleased to observe that the cause of imposture 
is going forward with rapid strides in every 
part of our dearly-beloved country. Its stand- 
ard is planted in every road and thoroughfare, 
and flies from every house-top. Its drum-beat 
is heard all over the land, summoning recruits, 
and rallying together the friends of sharp trade 
and large profit. Your board are deeply penetra- 
ted with heart -felt pleasure in being able to state 
that several interesting cases, illustrating the 
principles of this society, have occurred in the in- 
tercourse of the United -States' government and 
the red men, and in which the latter have been so 
signally overreached and outwitted, that it is sin- 
cerely feared by your board that they will never 
again furnish an example o£ the superiority of 
the white man over the Indian in natural cun- 
ning and profound roguery. The board have 
had it under serious consideration for the past 
six months, to establish agencies and branches 
of this society among the Indian tribes for the 
purpose of promoting the cause of imposture, 
and supplying the aborigines with the elegant 
amusements of trade and trickery which are of 
so much more elevated a character than their 
untutored pursuits in the forest. It is the opinr 
ion of your board that the Indians would make 
very good milliners, deputy-sheriffs, and auc- 
tioneers. Their taste in feathers — their keen- 
ness of scent, and their exquisite voices, woull 
amply qualify them for these employments. 

From reports which have already reached 



N. A. SOCIETY FOR IMPOSTURE. 



63 



your board they have reason to believe that the 
great cause in which we are engaged is making 
rapid progress among the native tribes. " The 
Choctaws," writes a firm friend of the cause, in 
April last, " The Choctaws have established a 
fashionable boarding-school among them for 
Choctaw young gentlemen. In this scbool I 
saw five Choctaw youths engaged in learning 
the Greek language — and going into a con- 
sumption. The cause is prospering ; all that 
is wanted is more brandy, more benevolence." 

With these flattering prospects before them 
your board can not but feel renewed zeal in the 
great cause in which they have embarked. On 
every side cheering and delightful evidences of 
the rapid spread and success of our principles 
present themselves to the eyes of your board. 
One source of unmingled gratification your 
board can not with justice omit to notice — the 
vast increase of physicians and attorneys. From 
this increase they augur the most favorable re- 
sults to the cause. Whatever can be done to 
promote its advancement by administering 
wrong medicines and improper advice, by pur- 
ging, as it were, the system and the pocket, and 
by fabricating respectable and not too moderate 
bills of costs and charges, will, they are assured, 
be done by the efficient and important auxilia- 
ries to whom they have alluded. The number 
of mortgages galloped into foreclosure, of con- 
sumptive patients to whom stiff' cathartics have 
been administered and of children who have 
been physicked indiscriminately without refer- 
ence to the disease, is truly cheering and en- 
couraging to your board. 

The efficiency and activity with which the 
master-builders have come up to the support of 
the cause also requires some notice at our 
hands. From an extensive and thorough in- 
quiry set on foot by one of your board we have 
learned that a method of building is now in 
practice throughout this city by which one 
whole side of the house is contrived to fall 
down some morning about two months after its 
erection, leaving the family pleasantly taking 
their tea on the remnant of the ruins. This 
system furnishes a very agreeable diversity in 
the monotonous course of married life, and meets 
the cordial and sincere approbation of your 
board. The master-builders have humbly in- 
quired of your board, whether the objects of 
the N. A. Society for the Encouragement of Im- 
posture would be best accomplished by having 
the defect in the timber or the brick- work. To 
enlighten your board they suggested that when 
the timber shrinks, in nine cases out of ten, a 
mere collapse takes place, a wall here and there 
sundering and a door giving way, but that when 
the brick-work is laid with sufficient haste and 
feebleness, there is a very good likelihood of the 
roof falling in, as the foundations are pretty sure 
of fielding. Your board, with due deference 
to the objects of the Society and the wishes of 
its members, after mature deliberation, decided 
in favor of the latter plan, as it furnishes the oc- 



| cupants of the building with a ready made 
j coffin and saves the expenses of a funeral. 

Your board regret to state that, in the midst 
of all this prosperity, a cloud has obtruded ; 
' two of the members of your board having been 
i unfortunately hanged during the past year, in 
| consequence of miscarriage in two or three in- 
| nocent schemes ; one, a resident member, hav- 
I ing been detected in an arson of a building con- 
taining a deed of a valuable piece of property, 
given by him, but not on record. The other, 
who was a respected corresponding member of 
your board, in the great valley of the West, had 
the misfortune to be lynched one morning be- 
fore breakfast, having been detected with a 
large bundle of the " Impostor's Primer" upon 
his person, which he was preparing to distrib- 
ute. Brother Snufflight fell a martyr to the 
cause, with the certificates of his zeal and his 
character in his hands ! Thus have two of our 
associates been snatched from our midst, in the 
very prime of their usefulness. Brother Snuff- 
light was twenty-seven the very morning he 
was subjected to martyrdom, as appears by an 
entry in his journal : " Twenty-seven this day ; 
Heaven willing, I shall consummate it by circu- 
lating the primer in large numbers — and dis- 
training on the widow for the rent of the small 
brick-front in Scrabble street." Your board 
have now brought their first annual report to a 
conclusion. They think they see enough in the 
results of the past year to animate you to re- 
j newed effort. The work truly is great ; it is a 
mighty and gigantic one. Contemplate it in all 
j its length and breadth, its depth and height — its 
majesty and beauty. And now that we have 
arrived at the commencement of another official 
1 year, will we not resolve that our course shall 
I be marked by activity — zeal — fury — madness ! 
— yes, we repeat, madness and insanity in the 
; great cause of imposture ! " Will we not," in 
the words cf the lamented Snufflight, '•' will we not 
live, eat, drink, sleep, with the mighty cause of 
imposture ever present to our minds ? Will we 
not give ourselves up, body, soul, and spirit, 
nerves, marrow, and fingers, to the giant busi- 
ness in which we have embarked ? Will we 
not give our right hands to the altar whose sun- 
light has poured its torrents upon our benighted 
minds — that others may also see and be bles- 
; sed ?" Your board can not do better than com- 
mend these remarkable words of the dying 
Snufflight to your understandings, and request 
yon (o contribute liberally to the cause of which 
he was so distinguished an ornament, as there 
is a deficiency in last year's account (as ap- 
pears by the treasurer's report) of one thousand 
one hundred and eleven dollars and twenty-three 
cents. 

In behalf of the Board of Managers, 

T. Boerttm, Cor. &?c. 

The reading of the report was frequently in- 
terrupted by intense and enthusiastic applause, 
and at its close the audience gav>> ■ fresh round 



64 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



more vigorous and enthusiastic than ever. The 
chairman now rose and stated that the treasur- 
er's annual report would be read by Brother 
Pawket, treasurer of the society, and, adjusting 
his spectacles he looked about the platform for 
the countenance of that excellent and skilful 
financier. To his astonishment, the face of 
Brother Pawket did not at once present itself to 
his view. Several members of the board of man- 
agers now joined Mr. Chalker in the search, 
and the eyes of the whole audience weie direct- 
ed, with fearful anxiety, toward the spot from 
which they expected the treasurer to emerge. 
Brother Pawket was not in the house ; a lad 
was instantly despatched to his residence to tell 
him that the audience were waiting for him 
and his report. In the meantime, to occupy the 
attention of the meeting, about fifty females in 
bonnets, and half as many males in red, brown, 
white, and auburn hair, stood up behind the 
president's chair and began bellowing in con- 
cert the touching and effective melody "All 
round my hat," or something that sounded very 
much like it. Just as they concluded, the boy 
came running back, and rushing, breathless, up 
to the meek Mr. Chalker, cried out, "Mrs. 
Pawket says as Mr. Pawket's gone to Halifax 
— and sends her compliments and hopes the 
S'ciety'll make provision for 'er, as she's left a 
destitute wider !" Mr. Chalker was thunder- 
struck at this figurative announcement of the 
fact that the treasurer had absconded — the 
board of managers turned pale with horror — 
and gloom pervaded the whole audience. The 
meek and solemn chairman, however, soon re- 
covered the tone of his mind, and, rising again, 
notified the audience that Brother Bibby was 
present and prepared to give them an interest- 
ing account of the state of imposture in foreign 
lands. With this, a middle-sized gentleman, 
with sable hair hanging over his back, like a 
hank of black yarn on a spinning-wheel head, 
and brushed back smartly from his forehead — 
stepped forward and smiled agreeably to the 
meeting. He forthwith threw himself into the 
proper attitude in front of the desk. " Within 
the past year he (Mr. Bibby) had visited Kams- 
chatka — the northern part of Russia — Hindos- 
tan, and several of the Pelew islands. From 
what he had seen, he was well satisfied the 
cause was triumphing in those regions of the 
earth. Dogs was horses, he was very happy 
to state, in Kamschatka still ; and in Hindostan 
widows was firewood. As to Russia he (Mr. 
Bibby) thought that Siberia was a delightful 
place, and continued to .have an uncommon num- 
ber of visiters ; Siberia was 50 solitary and re- 
tired like, that it was just the spot for philos- 
ophers and gentlemen who loved meditation and 
spare diet. The Pelew islands continued to 
maintain their well-established character for 
native tact and a certain adroit style of enter- 
ing ship's cabins and coat-pockets, which was 
still epidemical in that quarter of the world. 
But in Siam (continued Bibby, with great en- 
thusiasm), in Siam, it was that, he had been 



most profoundly astonished, gratified, and over- 
whelmed at the success of the great principles 
of imposture. He (Mr Bibby) had seen, in that 
favored country, elephants which would have 
done honor to this society, to any society ! He 
had seen them apply their trunks in such a man- 
ner to the pilfering and purloining of fruit and 
other articles, as to give him the highest de- 
light, and which he should remember to his dy- 
ing day. He (Mr. B.) thought this interesting 
animal might be introduced into different hu- 
man employments with great advantage. They 
were possessed of natural powers which would 
fit them for many stations of trust and impor- 
tance. Why (Mr. Bibby would ask), why 
could not several grown elephants be imported 
and dressed in leather hats and petershams, and 
substituted in the place of our city watchmen ? 
This was an age of improvement and he thought 
they would be very effective. Two or three 
large ones, placed on wheels and intoxicated 
with cold water, might be carried to fires instead 
of the corporation engines. He would not sug- 
gest, at present, that any of them should be con- 
verted into hackney-coachmen, although he 
thought they had a bullying air, which would 
enable them to extort liberal fare from their cus- 
tomers, and they were also furnished with large 
ears to keep off the rain. He however, (Mr. 
B.), before he took his seat, had one favor to ask, 
which he trusted the board of managers would 
grant. He hoped he would not be trespassing 
upon their kindness in making this request. He 
was sure that in making it he was actuated by 
the best of feelings and the noblest of motives. 
(Intense anxiety now manifested itself among the 
audience.) He was confident that he had the 
good of the society at heart in so doing. While 
in the lower part of Siara he had seen a white 
elephant, with a grave face, throw his trunk 
gracefully over the shoulder of a missionary and 
pick his pocket of two bibles, three small testa- 
ments, a bundle of tracts, and a gin-flask ! He 
wished to have that elephant elected an honor- 
ary member." (Thunders of applause, for more 
than ten minutes, in the midst of which Bibby 
sat down.) 

The chairman next introduced to the notice 
of the meeting, Gustavus Cobb, Esq., one of 
those tall,' slim, high-shouldered young gentle- 
men in whose formation the necessity of a body 
has been entirely overlooked, and who are, con- 
sequently, described as being — all legs. Gus- 
tavus Cobb was all legs, and looked like a lean 
ninepin in reduced circumstances. Judging 
from the slow, drawling manner in which he 
delivered himself, one might have sworn that 
Mr. Cobb had been brought up in the postof- 
fice. " He (Gustavus Cobb, Esq.) appeared 
there as the representative of the postmaster- 
general. He was the nephew of the postmas- 
ter-general. He knew that his uncle was a 
friend of this society. He himself was a super- 
intendent of mail-routes. In the performance 
of his duty he had often ridden with the drivers, 
and, from what he had observed, he was mor 



N. A. SOCIETY FOR IMPOSTURE. 



65 



ally certain that his uncle, the postmaster-gen- 
eral, was not hostile to the society. Attempts 
had heen made to turn the postmaster-general 
from his track ; they had proved fruitless. The 
P. M. general, firmly convinced that a certain 
calmness and solemnity should be observed in 
transporting the mails, had not allowed himself 
on any occasion to pass any one else on the 
public roads. He (the speaker) had, however, 
seen one alarming case where an attempt had 
been made to fall behind the mail-stage in com- 
ing into a post town, and which proved success- 
ful. It was a decrepid old woman, with a bag 
on her shoulder, travelling at a snail's pace on 
the Maysville turnpike. 

" * What are you carrying there, old lady V 
shouted our driver. 

" ' The mail !' answered the old woman. 

" ' I carry the mail !' answered the driver, 
firmly, endeavoring to drop behind the old crea- 
ture. 

" ' Yes !' screeched the awful hag, ' your's 
the regular, mine's the express !' And, do all 
we could, the driver was forced to get into the 
town some ten minutes before the old female 
opposition. 

" From a very extensive series of experiments, 
the P. M. General is satisfied that spavined old 
horses, between fourteen and fifteen years of 
age, make the best kind of mails. The liberal 
introduction of the use of this animal has had 
a charming effect on the mail arangements 
throughout the country. The only objection 
that has arisen to them is, that they are some- 
times too expeditious, and evince a disposition 
to get through within the hour". I have heard 
it hinted, I will not say by my uncle exactly, 
that to obviate this objection, the P. M. G. 
contemplates introducing donkeys throughout 
the department — superannuated donkeys. He 
thinks a superannuated donkey mail (judging 
from the comparative success of his old horse 
mail) world become extremely popular. 

"The deliberation, the safety and circum- 
spection with which letters might be carried by 
a donkey mail, would recommend it to mer- 
chants and men of business ; and the regular 
tardiness of its arrival and the slow moderation 
with which it would travel, would make a su- 
perannuated donkey mail an object of special 
favor among young gentlemen and young ladies, 
who are so fortunate as to be in love, and cor- 
responding. 

" His voice (Gustavus Cobb's voice) was de- 
cidedly and peremptorily in favor of a donkey 
mail ! He was convinced that the whole coun- 
try would rise to a man, in favor of a donkey 
mail, in preference to the present post office 
system!" 

At. the conclusion of the address of Mr. Cobb, 
a lively gentleman in a green silk vest and 
nankeens, was brought forward by the chair- 
man and announced as Brother Windbolt — the 
distinguished professor of all the arts and 
sciences, and proprietor of the Universal Insti- 
tute of Knowledge. 



" Sir," said the accomplished Windbolt, throw- 
ing back the right breast of his coat and delicately 
inserting his thumb in the armhole of his green 
silk vest, " Sir, I challenge the world to ques- 
tion my attachment to the North American So- 
ciety for the Encouragement of Imposture ! My 
fidelity to its great objects has, throughout my 
life, been kept in view with a steadiness which 
would make a bet of one thousand dollars (which 
I hereby offer) a very unsafe one for him who 
should doubt my devotion to its interests. Sir. 
it is well known to you, and I presume to this 
community, with what assiduity I have labored 
for the last ten years, to lighten the pockets — 
to simplify the financial concerns of the inhabit- 
ants of this city. Heaven he thanked ! the 
startling announcements which I have made in 
the public prints and by placards, of sciences to 
be taught by me in an incredibly brief space of 
time, have not been unattended with success. 
The incredibility of those announcements has 
been my salvation. The very impossibility of 
communicating knowledge as expeditiously as 
my advertisements promised, brought crowds to 
my door. 

" Ringing the changes along the whole gamut 
of imposture — from the doubtful — the absurd — 
the improbable — up to the impossible and the 
hideously monstrous and incredible, I have 
found the number of my patrons to swell steadily 
at each advance ! Or rather, I should say, that 
in running the higher keys of the scale, I 
found my patronage to increase at an enor- 
mously accelerated ratio ! 

" On looking over my accounts, sir, in July 
last, I discovered that my profits during the pre- 
ceding nine years had been so great, as to jus- 
tify my signalizing the event by some public 
celebration. Accordingly, on the tenth of Au- 
gust, having provided ample and liberal ac- 
commodations, I threw open the doors of my 
house, and gave (I hope I am not exaggerating 
in saying) the celebrated Windbolt Writing 
Festival!" Here the speaker was interrupted 
by thunders of applause, which pealed from 
every quarter of the building, and which con- 
clusively testified that the audience there pres- 
ent, considered the said W. W. Festival the 
most triumphant imposture of the day. 

" Of that festival, sir, I feel it my duty on 
this occasion to render some account. We all 
have a common interest in it. It was given for 
the benefit of our common principles. On the 
evening of the tenth of August last, then, at 
half-past seven, sir, four large rooms — in the 
Universal Institute — two square and two ob- 
long, were thrown open for the Festival. In 
one oblong room were stationed on stools at a 
large counting-house desk, twenty elderly gen- 
tlemen, in white inexpressibles and swallow- 
tails, prepared to exhibit in double entry, day- 
book, and ledger practrce : and an equal num- 
ber of young gentlemen, in blue roundabouts, 
actively engaged in algebra. In the square 
room adjoining this, tive-and-twenty elderly 
ladies were seated at pianos, harps, and harp- 



65 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



sichords. The second oblong room was occu- 
pied by the three Miss Windbolts, in cottage 
hats and yellow frocks, representing the three 
graces, with their hair in curl : with a full bevy 
of young ladies prepared to perform various 
elaborate steps and figures which had been 
communicated in two lessons of an hour each. 
But the third room, sir, held the wonder of 
wonders — nineteen select youth who were to 
play one hundred tunes, square the circle, solve 
the longitude, and lunch twice in the singularly 
brief space of twelve minutes, by the watch. 
I will not conceal the fact, that there was an- 
other smaller room, sir, and, in that room that 
Master Robert Windbolt (my youngest son) 
was elevated on a music stool, prepared to eat 
gingerbread held in his right hand and scribble 
away with his left at a prodigious rate for any 
given length of time ! 

" The festivities of the evening commenced. 
Twingle, twangle, thrum went the instruments : 
away flew the twelve couple of young ladies 
in a new highland reel — dash — like so many 
mad knight-errants scampered the goose-quills 
of the twenty elderly gentlemen over their 
ledgers — furiously the young gentlemen in azure 
jackets nourished their pencils — square the cir- 
cle — lunch — solve the longitude — lunch, went 
the nineteen select youth to the sound of their 
own flutes and French bugles. Round and 
round, like a crazy planet, whirled Master 
Windbolt, despatching small text by the sheet 
and gingerbread by the square yard. Hilarity 
and animation pervaded the rooms : everybody 
was delighted. The great festival bid fair to 
go off in glorious style, when suddenly sounds 
of merriment, mingled with cries for mercy, 
reached my ear. They proceeded from one of 
the oblong apartments. I hastened to the spot 
and there, sir, I discovered a spectacle at which 
I was literally horrified. Solitary imprisonment 
is nothing, sir — is a mere luxury — compared to 
the awful vision — oh, that it had been a mere 
creation of the brain ! — which met my eyes. 
Sir — I discovered the twenty elderly gentlemen, 
on their hands and knees — running the gauntlet 
in their white pantaloons, between the wide- 
spread legs of the twenty algebraic youth who 
were bestowing inky ferules upon their verte- 
bra] extremities. Through the dreadful strait 
they navigated and wriggled like so many eels 
with their tails cut oft'; with my astronomical 
eye I discovered dusky orbs floating through 
clear skies of white jean, which skirted those 
middle-aged flanks ! Sir, there was something 
captivating though still dreadful, in watching 
those venerable serpents — those respectable 
milk-snakes, creeping in at one end of their 
fated maze, and twinkling through, with nim- 
ble expedition, mapped all over with pitch- 
black rivers, torrents, and ink-falls ! I had 
scarcely recovered from the shock of this fear- 
ful spectacle, when I heard shrieks and shrill 
voices pitched in a high key, and a confused 
pother and tumult emanating from the remotest 
square room. Rushing breathlessly to that 



quarter, I found all the two-and-twenty of the 
elderly ladies engaged in a promiscuous conflict 
with each other, aided and abetted on both sides 
by large numbers of the elaborate dancing 
misses. I was completely stunned, Mr. Presi- 
dent, I will candidly confess, by this horrible 
uproar on all sides. I stood stock still between 
the two apartments, where I could look upon 
the progress of events in both, and dialogue and 
observations like the following, fell upon my 
ear. 

" < Go it Jehosaphat ! — Jehosaphat against the 
course! There's a flank, there's bottom for 
you, my boys !' from the oblong room. 

" 'This is my third quarter, Kate Slocum, deny 
it if you dare ! Pa paid Windbolt thirty dollars, 
in advance, in timber lands at Neversink !' 

" ' My husband had some schooling, I guess, 
afore he was forty ! I didn't teach my man his 
abs and babs, Mrs. Duncecombe ! no I didn't 
— tho' some people — you know !' 

" ' 'Sicore Windbolt says you thought the harp- 
sicord was a patent oven, when you first came 
here ; and told her what a big box of dominoes 
she had there, when she opened the piano !' 

These elegant specimens of objurgatory elo- 
quence issued from the square room, followed 
in each case by a manual attack on the fair 
physiognomy of the speaker, and the involun- 
tary discharge of certain facial ducts and 
arteries. 

" ' Easy, easy — striped bass ! hard on, Darby 
— lay on the tiller Jack — so, now we're through 
the Narrows !' cried a nautical voice in the ob- 
long room; and the separate directions were 
accompanied with sharp, clicking sounds, as of, 
some thin, solid parallelogram of wood lighting"' 
on a certain quarter of the human body encased 
in tight smalls. 

" ' Ten to one on the Leopard ! Golly, Joe, he 
goes it like a tiger through a jungle of lightnin' 
rods !' shouted a second voice, which was fol- 
lowed by a scrambling noise like that of a body 
in excessively rapid motion. 

In this way the confusion and clamor wan 
every minute increased. The great Windbolt 
Writing Festival assumed the exhilarating as- 
pect of being metamorphosed into a Saturnalian 
battle of elderlies and youngsters. It is but 
fair to add, that three elderly ladies, who had 
been taking music lessons at the Institute for 
thirty-nine quarters, were serenely seated in a 
corner of the square room during the affray, 
assiduously strumming on a broken harpsichord 
and two single-string harps, with the benevolent 
purpose of calming the agitation of the parties 
engaged. I was also highly gratified, sir, on 
strolling into the small room where Master 
Windbolt occupied a stool, to find his three 
sisters, the Misses Windbolts, laboriously en- 
gaged in assuaging his grief; for, as he himself 
informed me, his gingerbread was all out, — he'd 
got the cramp in his right hand, and the screw 
had worked through the top of the stool, and 
bored his hide and breeches ever so much ! 

After a while the tumult subsided ; the young 



N. A. SOCIETY FOR IMPOSTURE. 



67 



gentlemen in azure jackets had tired of their 
sport ; two of the elderly gentlemen in ink- 
striped white jean had rushed headlong out of 
the house ("stop that span of zebras !" I heard 
shouted in the street shortly after their disap- 
pearance) ; the old and young ladies had grad- 
ually subsided into that dead calm, into which 
the high winds of female passion are accustomed 
to fall after tempest. Thus concluded the Wind- 
bolt Writing Festival. I shall leave it with 
you and with this intelligent auditory, to decide 
my claims of fidelity and devotion to the in- 
terests of the N. A. Society for the Encourage- 
ment of Imposture, when I have stated, that of 
these numerous performers, the elderly gentle- 
men had taken four quarters' instructions, one 
hour and a half constituting a Windbolt quar- 
ter — in book-keeping ; the select youth twelve 
lessons a-piece (twenty minutes making a full 
Windbolt lesson) in bugle-playing, lunching, 
&c. ; the young ladies as many in the reel, fling, 
and gallopade ; and the algebraic young gentle- 
men seven quarters a-piece in equations, flux- 
ions, and trigonometrical science — all at the un- 
precedented rate, sir, of ten dollars the hundred 
lessons, and five dollars for twenty quarters — 
payable in advance ! I close, sir, by thanking 
this audience for their kind attention, and defy- 
ing any person present to produce man, woman, 
or child, that has ever profited a single quaver 
or fraction by attendance at the Windbolt Uni- 
versal Institute of Knowledge !" 

The speaker that followed Mr. Windbolt was 
a dark, heavy -browed, serious -looking individual 
who had spent the last half-dozen years of his life 
in the elegant amusement of passing people to 
their graves through an agreeable process of 
steam. " He (Mr. Bludgett) had certificates 
and affidavits by which he could show, to the 
entire satisfaction of the board of Managers of 
the N. A. Imposture Society, that he had been 
in the habit, for a good number of years past, of 
steaming to death, at the rate of one old woman 
and two small children every week. It might 
not always," remarked Mr. Bludgett, with an 
amiable contortion of countenance that might i 
have been borrowed from the devil's scrap- 1 
book, " It might not always be a literal old j 
woman and two literal small children ; but then j 
the vitality extinguished by him, each week, | 
would amount to about that. Sometimes it j 
would be two consumptive young men, with 
tolerably good constitutions : sometimes three 
sickly married females ; and sometimes his 
week's work would consist in disposing of a 
stout, healthy-looking man laboring under the 
delusion that he was deadly sick. He was 
quite sure — he was morally certain that, with a 
sufficient share of public patronage, he (Blud- 
gett) could despatch three grown men and an in- 
fant, or perhaps he might venture to say, three 
grown men and a tailor — per week. His baths 
were now in such admirable order — the Steam 
wasletofl, and the fresh air let on — and the 1 1 mm 
was let on and the fresh air let off, with such de- 
lightful precision and promptness that the busi- 



ness could be done in no time ! He would venture 
to turn any number of patients the Society for 
the Encouragement of Imposture might see fit 
to place under his charge, out of this world into 
the next, at the rate he had mentioned. If 
there should happen to be a surplus in the board 
of Managers itself, he would be very happy 
to convince any gentlemen that chose to tender 
themselves, of the efficacy of his system of 
practice !" Here Mr. Bludgett cast an awful 
leer upon Mr. Solomon Chalker as if nothing 
could be more perfectly captivating to his mind, 
than the idea of submitting his person to the 
steam process ; the audience laughed ; and Mr. 
Bludgett sat down with applause. 

The chairman now arose, and thanked the 
audience for their attendance and attention to 
the exercises of the occasion, and named the 
day and place at which and on which the next 
anniversary would be celebrated. 

Then followed " Anthem by the choir, and 
collection in aid of the funds of the Society !" 
and the crowded audience dispersed. It is but 
justice to the Society for the Encouragement 
of Imposture to mention that a number of tin 
sixpences and sanded half-dollars were found in 
the plate, which were supposed to have been 
put there by the honorary members and friends 
of the cause, who were distributed through the 
house. 



THE MERRY-MAKERS. - 
PLOIT No. II. 



-EX- 



CONTAINING A CRITICAL PASSAGE IN THE LIFE 
OF MR. BOBBYLINK, AND A DELIGHTFUL 
AQUATIC EXCURSION WHICH THAT GENTLEMAN 
TOOK IN COMPANY WITH MISS HETTY STEDDLE. 

Nature furnishes, now and then, a genuine 
comedy as full of love, bustle, and intrigue, as 
one of Farquhar's or Congreve's. Seated by 
the side of a babbling brook that pays tribute 
to a delightful lake of sparkling water, with a 
varied woodland sloping up from its banks, on 
a fragrant morning in June, you may see enact- 
ed a gay drama, pregnant with lively scenes and 
noisy dialogue. Near by, on some neighbor- 
ing rail, two amorous catbirds chatter away in 
animated discourse, hopping along the fence in 
flight and pursuit — a precious pair of ill-dressed, 
vagrant lovers : while, far off on the edge of 
the lake, so that their puny heads are just visi- 
ble, bobbing up and down, two friendly little 
snipes are paying their respects to each other 
over a dead water-fly. In a thorn-hush a sweet- 
tempered brown thrasher hurries through his 
joyous and flute-like song, as if be were afraid 
the day would be over ere he could disburden 
half his music. The love-lorn king-fisher hangs 
on a dry bough over the si ream, and brawls in 
his harsh, Startling voice, determined to out roar 
the current, and keeping an eye fixed sharply 



68 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



on its surface : the moment an unhappy fish 
becomes visible this aquatic bailiff springs upon 
him, fastens a talon on his shoulder, and hieing 
to a required quarter consoles himself for the 
absence of his mistress. Meantime, far up in 
the depths of a wood in a green glade, a tall 
crow, gloomy and self-absorbed, stalks about — 
the artful villain of the pastoral scene ; and 
midway, in the crumbling body of a dead ash 
tree sits an old owl, with his broad, goggling 
eyes, and the dry, white moss gathered about 
his politic pate like a full-bottomed tie-wig, 
looking as wise and grave as a judge — appa- 
rently deliberating in his own fusty mind what 
penalties to inflict on the cheerful creatures that 
are flitting and chatting and making themselves 
happy about him. If from his position, the ob- 
server could cast a glance towards a low fence 
that runs along a flat meadow to his left, he 
might discover a sleepy night-hawk dosing on 
a rail, blinking out of one eye and striving, like 
a conceited politician, to make it appear that 
he sees more with his single optic than most 
people with two. Over this profound thinker 
a troop of piratical blackbirds are on the wing — 
hovering a little in their flight, perhaps to 
watch the erudite Sir Hawk knocked in the 
head by the first country boy that passes with a 
gad — with a mill-pond hard by in view, scream- 
ing and babbling and uttering all kinds of dis- 
cordant noises, for all the world like a band of 
roving musicians twangling and sounding their 
way to a fashionable watering-place. To com- 
plete this little rural entertainment, in a buck- 
wheat field beyond the lake, a single stout- 
hearted quail sits calling (as if giving the 
prompter's cue for a favorite performer to come 
on) loudly and enthusiastically for "Bob 
White !" Of course Bob White, although thus 
earnestly invoked, disdains to appear ; but Bob 
Bobbylink is reclining in the midst of the many- 
colored scene I have described, with Mistress 
Hetty Steddle, the pretty serving-girl, at his side. 

They were seated on the bank of an impetu- 
ous little torrent, with a light fishing-boat near 
at hand, fastened with a cord to the stump of a 
tree in a cluster of bushes, and straining on its 
cable, with the heady current that rushed into 
the lake, like a violent horse dragging at his 
bridle. A pair of oars were lying on the bank. 

" Come now, Hetty," said the fascinating 
Bobbylink seizing the young lady's hand, and 
giving it a fervent pressure, while he arranged 
his face in a melancholy, half-smiling oblong, 
" Come now, Hetty, don't refuse, — say next 
Thursday and make me as happy as a robin in 
a cherry-tree." 

" But why not wait, Robert, till your grand- 
mother is dead ?" responded the young lady 
with an arch look, " You know you'll have a 
nice little property then, and that will make us 
comfortable. What odds are a few days or a 
few weeks ?" 

" Good heavens ! how you talk, girl ! — my 

dmother's only seventy, and her mother, 

eat-grandmother — lived till she was a 



hundred and one, within a day. Why they're 
a regular brood of she Methusalahs !" 

" Old women can't live for ever," retorted 
Hetty, " and when you heard from her the other 
day they thought an east wind would carry her 
off." 

"You can't depend on that race of old 
ladies a minute : to day they'll be looking thin 
and ghastly, with a c good-by to you all,' writ 
ten as plain as large text on their features— and 
a whole mob of cousins and grand-nevys and 
nieces swarm round the old woman, peering into 
her face like a parcel of farmers in harvest, 
staring at a wet moon : every one thinking the 
old lady's passport for the next world is made 
out and filled up. The pretty nieces run over 
in their mind how many yards — she being a 
long-limbed body — it will take for her shroud, 
and the charming grand-nevys and cousins are 
busy putting out their legacies on compound in- 
terest." 

" Dreadful, inhuman wretches !" interposed 
Mistress Steddle, with a look or horror. 

" The next day," concluded Bobbylink, " she 
gets up from her dying bed and says, with a 
smile, that she can't leave this world until she 
has seen some of her great great grand-children 
(that are now infants) grown up and married : 
and 'gad I believe the old creature will keep 
her word ! — so, Hetty, you must say next week, 
or postpone it tilldwe're both gray !" 

" Now, Robert," said Hetty, " I am going to 
ask a great favor of you. Do you think you 
can be liberal enough to grant it, mind — it's a 
very great favor, I give you warning !" 

"Anything, my dear Hetty — you can hav 
anything of mine you ask — even my life." 

" No, I don't want that — I shouldn't know 
what to do with it — my own little wicked life is 
as much as I can manage." 

" What is it — ask quick, and I grant at once ! 
What's the mighty favor you desire of Bob Bob- 
bylink ?" 

" To tell the perfect truth without a joke," 
answered Hetty smiling, " isn't this entire story 
about your Jersey grandmother made out of whole 
cloth — spun on your own wheel, with your 
head for the distaff and your tongue for the 
spindle ? And didn't you contrive it from fear 
that young Jolton would carry off Hetty Sted- 
dle from you on the back of his property — and 
as you were pennyless, you matched him by 
throwing in a snug piece of a farm in the Jer- 
sies ? — Out with it, Robert — don't let the truth 
choke you, although it isn't used to trav'ling 
the Bobbylink turnpike." 

" Hetty, you're a shrewd girl, and you've 
guessed right," answered Bob Bobbylink laugh- 
ing. " If I have any grandmother in Jersey 
she ha'n't much love for her kin, for she's never 
notified me of her existence and I've had two 
grandmothers buried already. That's as many 
as I'm entitled to by law — 'specially as my 
parents never married but once a-piece !" 

At the conclusion of this honest confess/on 
the young gentleman and young lady burst into 



THE MERRY-MAKERS.— EXPLOIT No. II. 



u hearty fit of laughter, which having lasted 
the proper time, Hetty Steddle exclaimed, with 
an air of great seriousness, " Bobbylink ! — 
now what do you think you deserve for deceiv- 
ing a poor girl in this way ? Do you suppose 
I'll have you without your property ? in this 
part of the country cows aren't bought for the 
sake of their horns, but we're willing to take 
the horns because we can't get the cows with- 
out 'em." 

" Very well," said Mr. Bobbylink with a rue- 
ful aspect ; " if you can desert me now, Hetty — 
there's Polly Todd will take me without a 
copper and bring me hard cash besides !" Rob- 
bert Bobbylink, Esq., chief of the clan of mer- 
ry-makers was, by reason of a tolerably good- 
looking person and a sprightly wit, a great 
favorite among the rural young ladies, and the 
one in question, Miss Polly Todd, had conceived 
a desperate attachment to our worthy. She 
was a professed rival of Hetty Steddle, and the 
mention of her name produced a fluttering sen- 
sation in the bosom of the latter. 

" What if Pol. Todd can bring you a few dol- 
lars," she said, " perhaps others has got money 
as well as her. There's old Hetty Pease is 
worth twice Polly Todd and her whole genera- 
tion." 

" What of that ?" asked Bobbylink. 

" Perhaps Hetty Pease didn't die last night — 
and didn't leave all her earnings, by will, to 
her poor good-for-nothing name-sake and fos- 
ter-child, Het. Steddle !" 

" You don't say so, Hetty ? — it can't be — it's 
too good to be true !" exclaimed Bob Bobbylink 
rapidly. 

" But it is so," answered the young lady 
bursting into tears, throwing herself into the 
arms of Bobbylink, " the poor kind old woman 
is gone ! and it's all yours, Robert — take it all 
and me with it !" 

Robert Bobbylink was not a little affected 
by these marks of affectionate tenderness both 
towards himself and the dead, on the part of 
Hetty Steddle, and pressing her to his breast, 
and imprinting several eager kisses on her fair 
face, he said, " Cheer up, my dear girl — all will 
be right, pennyless or rich — in health or in sick- 
ness — I'll take you, Hetty — as to Mrs. Pease, 
you needn't grieve about that — c old women' 
you know, according to a high authority f can't 
live for ever !' " At this unexpected quotation 
of her own sagacious apothegm, Hetty could 
not refrain from laughter, and in a few minutes 
her pretty countenance entirely cleared up and 
wreathed itself in its wonted smiles. After this 
they conversed a long time earnestly together. 
Hetty, at first, urged that respect to her deceased 
friend demanded the solemnization of their nup- 
tials should be postponed at least a twelvemonth. 
To this Bob Bobbylink responded, that in her 
present situation, immediate marriage would 
be perfectly proper ; she had come into the pos- 
session of considerable property, and could not, 
he insisted, with any degree of self-respect, re- 



main longer at service. If she abandoned her 
present home, where in the wide world could 
she find another — now that her last relation had 
gone the way of death. 

By arguments like these, Hetty's repugnance 
was finally overruled. 

"Now, if you'll grant me a single favor, 
Robert," said she, "I'll consent that the — " here 
Hetty blushed like the goddess of Liberty on a 
village sign-board, painted by an artist, whose 
palette lacks all the other colors of the rainbow 
but red, " that the — the — it shall be next Thurs- 
day week." 

" Certainly," said Bob smiling and highly de- 
lighted ; " I'll grant anything Mrs. Bobbylink 
asks. What is it, my pretty yellow-bird ?" 

" Your pretty yellow-bird, Robert, how is 
that ? I hope I haven't the jaundice this morn- 
ing !" said Hetty, laughing. " But, here's the 
point — you must discard that clumsy fellow, 
Sam. Chisel !" 

" What that great dunce ! why it's done be- 
fore it's asked ; a heavy, woodcock-pated lout, 
that has attempted my life any time these past 
three years by his infernal long stories and stu- 
pid jokes. Sam. Chisel ! I'll make a horse- 
block of him, Hetty, if you want me to, and 
cut his long ears into patterns for saddle-covers 
if you ask it." 

« And Habakkuk Viol." 

" Let him go, too." 

" And Harvest." 

" Off with his head — they're a pair of barren 
knaves, that for some mysterious purpose have 
been born with mouths, without the wit to get 
anything to put into 'em ; and backs that would 
go bare, begging your pardon, as a new-laid 
egg, if they hadn't had a friend in Bob Bobby- 
link. Let them shirk from this time forth, for 
themselves !" 

" Well," continued the inexorable and victo- 
rious Hetty Steddle, " There's Tom Snipe. He 
goes of course — the poor wretch that he is." 

" Tommy, why Tommy's a harmless critter, 
and might be useful in doing chores about the 
house." 

" Don't mention him !" exclaimed Hetty, " I 
can't bear the sight of him ; he reminds me so 
much, with his warped visage, of a lean kitten 
in a fit. The scamp absolutely attempted to 
kiss me once !" 

"Away with him then! away with him!" 
cried Bobbylink with animation. 

" Discharge Smally, now, and you've done a 
good morning's work." 

" Poor John ! never — never," said Bob Bob- 
bylink with sudden enthusiasm, " he has been 
always true to me, and it's but fair that I should 
be always true to him. You may strip every 
branch and limb off of the old tree — and wel- 
come, but that leaf hangs, and all the tempi sis 
in the sky may blow, and the old tree may rock 
and quiver to its very roots, but I tell you that 
leaf shall cling to the last. John Smally — my 
own right hand man— it's impossible, Hetty !" 



70 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



"He is always flinging his jokes at one ; and 
he has even snickered at you, before now,' 5 con- 
tinued Hetty, hoping to touch Bob's personal 
feeling. 

" I don't care for that," he answered firmly ; 
" he has a right — for many's the crack I've had 
at his expense. Come, Hetty, spare me one ! 
You had better tiy to drive Burdock's brown 
mare in single harness, or knit stockings out 
of bulrushes, than get me to forego my old 
friend, John !" 

Hetty had by this time discovered, from his 
tone and manner, that Bob would not relinquish 
this last of his merry comrades, and desisted 
from the attempt, for the present, but not with- 
out a further request. 

"Now to finish the weeding and make a 
clean garden of it, there's another promise to be 
made : you must leave off Shekkels, the man in 
the mask, the bull's horns, and all your other 
mad capers and carryings-on. D'ye under- 
stand — if you don't I shall have you a'vertised 
as a ' stray,' the first thing." They both laugh- 
ed heartily over the pleasant reminiscences 
which Hetty's allusions conjured up, and Bob 
Bobbylink (with a liberal mental reservation in 
favor of stone-frolics, Christmas shooting, and 
black-fishing) granted her reasonable request, 
that he should become " a good, sober man 
about the house." 

" But stop, my dear," said he, " there's a 
favor you must bestow on me in return for all 
this." 

" What's that, Robert ?" said Hetty, blush- 
ing, and supposing he hinted at a kiss. 

" You must let all these poor dogs come to 
the wedding ; it will be for the last time, and 
it would break their hearts to shut them out !" 

" Well, well," answered Hetty complacently, 
" I suppose it must be so — although I think it 
would be a slight waste of cheap crockery if 
all their hearts were broken in a row." 

" Now," said Bobbylink, rapturous with the 
unexpected success of his suit, capering about 
the grass, and ever and anon kissing and em- 
bracing his fair mistress, " now, Hetty, I think 
we can take our sail down the lake with some 
comfort ; come, jump in !" 

Obeying his injunction, she sprang lightly 
into the boat ; at this moment the cable was un- 
loosed by an unseen hand from its fastening and 
Bob Bobbyli ik, gasping with astonishment and 
surprise, beheld his ladye-love floating, alone, 
down the n pid current. Hurrying along the 
bank, and keeping even with the boat, he reach- 
ed a rock that jutted into the water, and as the 
vessel glided by, he succeeded in throwing him- 
self on board. A violent eddy seized it and 
hurried it out into the middle of the lake, and 
bore it swiftly away towards the opposite shore. 
In his trepidation and haste Bobbylink had 
forgotten the oars, and they were in a light and 
feeble craft without any means of directing its 
course, or providing against accidents that were 
likely to occur. To render their situation still 
more dismal and perplexing they heard every 



now and then, a hoarse laugh sounding in the 
woods and echoed and re-echoed by the cliffs 
along the shore of the lake. A superstition 
prevailed in that quarter of the country, that a 
spectral personage whom they styled the Laugh- 
ing Devil, roamed constantly about these woods, 
and gave token, by a harsh startling laugh or 
chuckle, of danger impending over the neigh- 
boring inhabitants. Plough-boys on their way 
home through the woods, after nightfall, pre- 
tended to have seen a short, burly creature, with 
a grisly beard and stiff shock of jet-black hair, 
standing in the shadow of a stunted ash-tree, 
or dwarf-oak, holding both his sides, with his 
face distorted by laughter which he seemed to 
suppress by main force ; and which, when they 
reached the edge of the forest, would burst from 
him with great violence and startle them like 
a near peal of thunder. 

An idle fellow, who spent much of his time 
in wandering about the swamps and low- 
grounds of this region with his gun, asserted 
that more than once, when he had raised his 
fowling-piece to his shoulder and was on the 
point of levelling it at a wild-pigeon or a gray- 
squirrel, he had been horribly alarmed by see- 
ing the bird or animal suddenly moult its feath- 
ers or hide, which fell to the ground like the 
cast-off slough of a copperhead, and, in the 
twinkling of an eye, become transformed into a 
robust goblin, who leered upon him from amid 
the leaves with a countenance distended with 
laughter, while tears of mirth flowed copiously 
down his wrinkled cheeks. His gun, this vag- 
abond sportsman added, would inevitably be 
out of order in a day or two after the vision, 
and miss fire a dozen times or more in succes- 
sion, if the powder was in the least damp ! How- 
ever this might be, it was a well-known fact, 
that just after a thunder-storm this mysterious 
sound was sure to be heard loudest, and they 
often found immense trees riven to the very 
roots, and lying maimed and prostrate upon the 
earth, in the quarter of the woodland whence it 
had issued. If the grain was blighted, or a foal 
cast before its time, or a sheep missing, that 
long, fiendish peal of laughter was heard echo- 
ing and ringing through the woods, and the 
birds took to flight as if from some dreadful ob- 
ject of terror and alarm. 

The sounds which reached the ears of Bob 
Bobbylink and his companion at the present 
time seemed, therefore, peculiarly awful and 
ominous. To increase their anxiety, they 
thought they saw faces, ever and anon, thrust 
from among the bushes and grape-vines which 
overhung the banks, grinning and moping with 
aspects more like those of malicious spirits than 
of men. This might have been phantasy, but they 
swept straight onward, and were in the utmost 
peril of being dashed h eadlong against a rock that 
projected into the lake, when suddenly a boat 
shot from within its shadow, and, making for 
that in which Bobbylink was seated and run- 
ning close by their side, one of the persons that 
occupied it gave Bobbylink's boat a forcible 



THE MERRY-MAKERS.— EXPLOIT No. II. 



71 



turn by the bows, and pushed her out into 
mid-channel. Bobbylink now observed that the 
strange boat was held by four men. On closer 
inspection he discovered that they were persons 
with whom he was acquainted, and with re- 
gard to whom he had been making sundry very 
liberal promises during the morning, to Miss 
Hetty Steddle. 

The boat of the four new-comers now began 
to play about Bobbylink's ; and its occupants 
threw out, as they flashed athwart her bows or 
alongside, observations like the following — 
much in the same way as a frigate skirmishes 
about a crippled seventy-four, firing a broadside 
at each evolution — reloading, and coming up 
on the other quarter with a fresh discharge. 
"Ha ! ha!" cried one of them, exhibiting a 
broad countenance, distorted with laughter, 
" that stupid dunce, Sam. Chisel, sends his 
compliments to you, Mr. Bobbylink, and hopes 
it's a fine morning for sailing. He presents 
you a brace of heavy woodcocks," giving Bob- 
bylink a blow on either side of the head with 
his open hand as they crossed the stern, " and 
sends you a tumbler of the fresh fluid to wash 
'em down !" He followed his last observation 
with the discharge of a boat -horn full of water 
from the lake ; each one of the four being sup- 
plied with a short weapon of that kind, which, 
as every one knows, consists of the horn of an 
ox attached to the extremity of a wooden han- 
dle, and is used in sloops and other river-craft, 
to wet the sails. 

" Any word to send to your friend 'Bak Vi- 
ol ?" said another of them, "he's in a famishing 
and dreadful state, having a mouth, without 
the wit to get anything to put in it. Do send 
him a drop of water and a kind word, if no 
more." And this gentleman playfully repeated 
the baptismal ceremony performed by his friend 
Chisel. 

" Take that," exclaimed a third, a little man 
with a dry visage, punching Bobbylink with the 
butt-end of his boat-horn in the back and ribs, 
" take that from that harmless critter, Tommy 
Snipe ! and this, mistress," dashing a hornful 
of water into the face of Miss Steddle, " there's 
something to cool your kitten with, when she's 
in a fit ! ha ! ha !" 

" As for Harvest, let him shirk for himself," 
said a fourth, " he's a poor, barebacked ani- 
mal, and is of no more value than an old rain- 
spout," accompanying his words with a copious 
commentary of an aquatic nature. 

Wheeling the boat about, and discharging 
small-shot like this, they at length seemed to 
have wrought the sport to a climax, and at a 
signal given by Habakkuk Viol, they prepared 
for its consummation by each filling his boat- 
horn to the brim. 

" There, Bobby," cried Habakkuk, dis- 
charging his piece, " put that in your pocket, and 
keep it to sprinkle your firstborn with !" 

" Young lady," shouted Sam. Chisel, " them 
nice, buddin' roses on your cheeks, wants wa- 



terin' a little," and he supplied the deficiency 
forthwith. 

" Linkem !" exclaimed Harvest, " I don't be- 
lieve your coat's ever been sponged, that," 
throwing the contents of a boat-horn on the 
collar and skirts of his upper-garment, " that 
does the business for you ! — and there's a little 
of the rock-crystal to drink your tailor's health 
in!" 

" Miss, how's them colors on your gown — 
will they stand the water ?" said Tommy Snipe, 
instantaneously applying the test to which he 
alluded. 

"May-be your pockets is dry," suggested 
Sam. Chisel, insinuating a couple of hornsful 
adroitly into that quarter of Mr. Bobbylink's 
dress, " they're gapin' like oysters for a drop o' 
drink." 

" What a nice water-proof Robert's got on, 
this morning !" exclaimed Viol, testing the hat- 
ter's assertion recorded in the lining, by a small 
artificial shower. " Warranted against thun- 
der, lightning, and rain !" 

" Why, Bob, you look like a pond-duck in 
the equinoctial !" said Sam. Chisel, " is that 
your mate, Bobby ? — if so it be, her feathers 
want purifying !" 

" Judging by the crook of his nose," contin- 
ued Hank Harvest, " he looks more like a fish- 
hawk," and again emptying his boat-horn, « he 
should get used to his adopted element." 

Now, with a grand and general discharge of 
their pieces, as they discovered that they were 
nearing the opposite shore, and the idea flashed 
across their minds that if Bobbylink and his com- 
panion were once landed, they might annoy them 
pretty seriously from the banks, they altered their 
boat's course, and, shooting athwart his bows, 
plied their oars for the other end of the lake. 

"There, Mr. Bobbylink," exclaimed Viol, 
as they parted company, tossing him a farewell 
beaker of the fluid, " I advise you to save that 
to wash your face with the first time it's clawed 
by Mrs. Hetty Bobbylink." 

" And don't forget to make me a pair of sad- 
dle-covers out of Sam. Chisel's ears — when you 
catch him !" shouted the proprietor of said ears, 
grinning monstrously, and playfully projecting a 
jet of water into the mouth of Bob Bobbylink, 
which stood agape with astonishment and terror. 

During all these manoeuvres, which had been 
executed within a brief space of time and with 
admirable dexterity, Bobbylink h^d retained his 
seat, half inclined to kindle into a horrid pas- 
sion, and half determined to bursi, into a hearty 
laugh, and take it all as a good joke. To be 
sure, when he looked upon his fair mistress, 
and saw her new figured-silk dress drenched 
with water, he was sorely vexed and discom- 
forted; but he had brought, he well knew, the 
whole catastrophe upon them by his hasty 
promise to discard his old friends ami cast them 
loose, in the very first hour of his prosperity 
and success. 

He therefore felt bound, in conscience and 



72 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



honor, to bear it cheerfully, and accordingly he 
had no sooner handed Hetty from the boat than 
his lungs exploded in a genuine and honest 
cachination, in which he was instantly joined 
by Miss Steddle, that young lady enjoying a 
very pretty sense of the ludicrous, and feeling, 
with her worthy associate, that she deserved 
it all. 

Pleasantly laughing over the whole scene, 
they seated themselves on a wall in the sun, 
and speedily drying their garments, started off 
to gather blackberries instead of tempting, a 
second time, the unlucky element. 



DISASTERS OF OLD DRUDGE. 

CONTAINING THE UNLAWFUL IMPRISONMENT 
OF AN OLD GENTLEMAN ; A POPULAR BAT- 
TLE BETWEEN TWO ATTORNEYS, AND A FEW 
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE IMPRO- 
PRIETY OF OLD GENTLEMEN BEING OUT AF- 
TER DARK. 

The village of Plumpitts stands at the head 
of a vile little creek, which runs in and out 
from the Sound with the tide. Unfortunately, 
the tide has a propensity to be out oftener than 
in, so that Plumpitts, for the better part of the 
day, sits like a great duck stranded in the mid- 
dle of the mud. The inhabitants of Plumpitts 
are of two classes ; those who belong to the 
river interest, and those who belong to the in- 
land interest. The former, consisting of two 
rival sloop captains, half a score of vagabond 
boys and idle -looking men, who assist the said 
captains in navigating their craft to the city ; 
and the inland interest, consisting of half-a-doz- 
en shopkeepers, and as many pestilent old wo- 
men, the former of whom spend their time in re- 
tailing sugar and starch to customers from the 
interior, and the latter in wholesaling scandal 
and small-talk to each other — and a very thri- 
ving trade they make of it. The standing pop- 
ulation of the village is composed of about twen- 
ty blue-nosed topers, who hover about a place 
called the Point, like so many noisy gulls, du- 
ring the early part of the morning and toward 
night, and pass the rest of the day in dirty fish- 
ing boats along the shore of the Sound, solemn- 
ly engaged in capturing black -fish and bass for 
their present wants, and providing a stock of 
cramps and rheumatisms for their old age. 

About three miles back of Plumpitts, there 
lay, once upon a time, an ill-conditioned piece 
of land and a dilapidated old house, which, al- 
together, was entitled the homestead ; and in a 
small room in the old house, a sharp-faced, 
gray-eyed little woman, and a red-visaged man, 
some two sizes larger, were seated at a break- 
fast-table. The little woman sat erect and was 
engaged with toast and coffee, and the man was 
bent nearly double over a bowl of sour butter- 
milk, and a white, earthen plate, holding a sin- 
gle small perch or sunfish, burnt to a crisp. 



" Drudge !" cried the little woman, sharply. 

" Ma'am," answered the red-visaged man, 
timidly. 

" You know I own this farm ?" 

" Yes." 

" And this house ?" 

" Yes — and the span of horses and the fam- 
ily carriage !" 

" Very well — and all the ready money — do 
you know that ?" 

" Oh, yes," responded Mr Drudge, in a faint 
voice. 

" And that you brought nothing but an old 
saddle when I married you ?" 

" Yes, ma'am." 

" How dare you, then, eat fish and butter- 
milk together, contrary to my express orders ? 
Yes — how dare you — you miserable pauper !" 
shouted Mrs. Drudge, working herself into a 
sublime phrensy. 

" Dear Tishy, I thought there was no harm 
in it" — 

" Don't Tishy me — don't dear me — you ob- 
ject." 

"You know I caught the perch myself," 
humbly suggested her red-visaged victim. 

" I know you did — you poor creature — when 
you ought to have been at home minding your 
business. You hav'n't split your day's oven- 
wood yet, nor milked, nor brought water, nor 
churned — you've done nothing this morning, 
Drudge, worse than nothing — oh, you poor, lazy 
thing !" and she gave the poor man a glance, 
which, if it had been half a degree fiercer, must 
have inevitably scorched him to a cinder. At 
this moment, a heavy-headed country boy thrust 
his face in at the door, horribly distorted with 
terror and bad news, and cried out, " Buzbee's 
red bull, missis, has just busted into the corn, 
and our sheep has just busted out of the long- 
lot into Buzbee's woods — and the devil's to pay 
all over the farm !" 

" There's more work for you, Drudge !" 

" Oh yes !" rejoined that gentleman, adopt- 
ing his customary reply when he had nothing 
better to say. 

" Why didn't you look after that fence ? I told 
you Buzbee's bull would be over before a week's 
time. And why hav'n't you penned the sheep, 
as I ordered you a month ago ?" 

The heavy-headed boy here returned and in- 
terposed. 

" I forgot to say, missis, that the storm last 
night 'as washed away the little barn — and mis- 
sis' carriage is buried in Blind brook, half full 
of mud, and two thirds o' water." 

" My God !" cried Mrs. Drudge, in a sudden 
paroxysm of anxiety, " I thought it would be so, 
Drudge, I thought it would be just so. You 
wouldn't move that barn further up on the bank 
— no, you wouldn't — though you might have 
done it, if you'd strained yourself a little, with 
Moe's help. Good heavens ! I'm afraid the 
carriage is ruined, and I wanted to use it this 
very day — good Lord !" 

" I think it might be got out, missis," con- 



DISASTERS OF OLD DRUDGE. 



73 



tinued the heavy-headed youth, if Mr. Drudge 
would be so good as to give me a lift." The 
heavy-headed youth smiled profoundly, as if he 
thought it would be a very brilliant stretch of 
fancy to suppose for a moment that Mr. Drudge 
could escape the necessity of furnishing his as- 
sistance, manual and bodily. 

" Drudge, do you hear !" cried his sweet-tem- 
pered spouse, " go along with Moses, and help 
him get the carriage out, this instant !" 

Moses had left the room. " Moses !" shout- 
ed Mrs. Drudge, "Moses!" 

" Here, ma'am, here I be," responded the 
youth, pushing a segment of his broad face over 
a corner of the lintel. 

" You may help Drudge a little while, Moses, 
only five minutes, be back here by that time. I 
want you to cut some 'sparagus to put in the 
front parlor, and a nosegay for the fireplace — 
I expect aunt and sister to tea, Moses," she 
concluded, bestowing a bland smile upon the 
heavy-headed juvenile. 

Moses and Mr. Drudge thereupon departed, 
the latter muttering, as he turned a corner of 
the house, a fervent prayer for the immediate 
demise and interment of the amiable lady whom 
he had just left. As they crossed the fields on 
their way to the scene of labor, Drudge was 
the first to open a conversation with his com- 
panion. 

" Underhill," said he, " have you got the 
money by you for those muskrat skins ?" 

" No, I hav'n't just now," replied the boy, 
" Fields told me if I'd come over to the tanyard 
to-morrow he'd settle with me." 

" And what have you done with the bag of 
fresh feathers ?" 

" Them — why, put them aboard the market- 
wagon. I expect you'll have returns by next 
Tuesday, or the day arter," responded the youth, 
with a very intricate and complicated expression 
of countenance, which might have been con- 
strued to mean half-a-dozen things at once. 

" I want that money very much," said 
Drudge, partly to himself and partly to his 
companion. " There's Quimby's bill, on the 
P'int, and John Merritt's account for clothing, 
ought to be paid the first time I go to Plumpitts." 

" I think they ought, by all means," echoed 
master Moses Underhill, with the same ambi- 
dexter look. 

They had now reached Blind brook, and dis- 
covered the family carriage up to its waist in 
the middle of the channel, the water dashing 
over its dark top like that of some huge, black 
monster which was struggling for its life up the 
stream. 

" Moses," said Drudge, after surveying it for 
a moment, "you'll have to strip and go in." 

" Catch me !" exclaimed master Moses, re- 
treating backward up the bank, " if you say 
two words about that again, Drudge, I'll go 
home and tell missis, and then you'll catch it I 
reckon !" 

Mr. Underhill accompanied this tender threat 
with a complacent grin, which had the singular 



eifect of throwing old Drudge into a violent 
fever, which lasted some three minutes and a 
quarter. 

" Well, Moses," said he at last, finding the 
youth intractable, " I suppose I must do it my- 
self, or else (lowering his voice) there'll be the 
devil out of the pit to pay up at the house !" 

Directing his companion to bring a coil of 
rope and a couple of lengths of rail, old Drudge 
stripped stark naked and plunged in. 

The first discovery he made was, that Blind 
brook was some two feet deeper than he had 
imagined, and, consequently, over his head. 
His first movement after making this pleasant 
discovery was to grasp the limb of a tree which 
overhung the stream. This he succeeded in 
doing, and sustained himself by it some five min- 
utes, bawling all the time to Moe Underhill for 
help ; and when, at length, that charming youth 
came forward to his assistance, his zeaj. and eager- 
ness to rescue Mr. Drudge were so overpowering 
that he rushed headlong against the tree from 
which that gentleman was suspended, with such 
precipitancy as to shake Mr. Drudge directly in- 
to the water as if he had been a shrunken russet- 
in-apple, in want of nothing but moisture. At 
the very moment when he fell, a heavy swell 
of the freshet came tumbling and raging down 
the brook, and, striking Mr. Drudge obliquely 
over the shoulder, carried him under ; he rose 
for a minute to the surface, and threw out his 
hands convulsively toward the outstretched 
limb, Mr. Moses Underhill ran up and down 
the bank, shouting to him to " dive for the 
coach !" — when a second billow, heavier than 
the first, rushed upon him and bore him from 
the sight. The injunction of Moe Underhil (in 
whatever spirit it was given) was not lost upon 
the submerged Drudge, for, aiming with con- 
siderable skill, he succeeded in permitting him- 
self to be borne in at the carriage-door, which 
was swung open by the tide. Shortly after, a 
long, melancholy-looking head was put out at 
the top of the coach-door, and Moses discovered 
that old Drudge stood upon the back seat of the 
family carriage, and was safe. 

After waiting something like an hour, until 
the swollen torrent had subsided, Old Drudge 
and his companion renewed their attempt, and, 
with many struggles, by the aid of rope and 
crowbar and bar-post, they succeeded in roll- 
ing the carriage upon the bank — the greater 
share of the labor falling, of course (out of def- 
erence to his years), upon the patient Mr. 
Drudge. 

In the course of a couple of hours more, the 
carriage was cleaned and partially dried, and 
stood before the door awaiting Mrs. Drudge's 
orders. The horses that were harnessed to it 
were a notable couple, being sorrel twins, hav- 
ing long, ghastly necks, short tails, and punchy 
bodies, with small mouths and mournful eyes; 
and, to complete their character, lean and fee- 
ble, with a look of over-work and ill-usaire. 

"Drudge!" screamed the amiable female 
bearing that name, standing in the door and di- 



74 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



recting a withering glance towards Mr. Drudge, 
who was slowly shambling up the lane com- 
pletely exhausted and toil-worn. " Drudge, — 
I want you to get in the carriage and go down 
to Plumpitts at once !" 

" Oh yes !" said the poor man, meaning " oh 
no," a thousand times repeated with an em- 
phasis. 

" Get in immediately, and I'll tell you what I 
want." Drudge mounted in, almost mechani- 
cally, under the talismanic influence of that in- 
exorable voice. " And now turn the key, 
Moses : there — sit still now, Diudge, and mind 
me ?" 

These words had been accompanied by the 
closing of the carriage-door, the insertion of an 
iron key in a lock attached to the same (which 
Mrs. Drudge had placed there, knowing old 
Drudge's propensity to indulge in potations and 
forget his errands when he visited the thirsty 
and drinking village of Plumpitts) and Mr. 
Drudge's assuming a quiet, martyr-like demea- 
nor, as if he had been put in jail and expected 
every minute to be brought out to instant exe- 
cution. 

" In the first place, Drudge, you'll get me a 
pound of Mr. Slimfink's best tea — best young 
hyson : try it yourself, Drudge, you're a good 
judge of tea, Joel, though you don't get it but 
once a week !" 

" Oh yes !" murmured Drudge, softly. 

"You needn't get out there; Slimfink will 
bring a sample to the door, I gave him direc- 
tions when I was there last about that. Next, 
Drudge, you'll go over to Wringold's shop, and 
purchase two yards of his small spotted calico — 
just in. Mind Drudge — small spotted red 
calico — spots very small. 

" Can't he get me a new jacket, missis, while 
he's there ?" suggested Moe Underhill from the 
box seat, smiling pleasantly on his mistress. 

" You deserve a jacket — don't you — you vil- 
lain, for minding me so well this morning, and 
coming back in just five minutes. You good- 
for-nothing, you ought to have the jacket you've 
got on well-trimmed, instead of a new one. — 
And Drudge, you can stop at Slimfink's as you 
come back, and buy me seven pounds of Havana 
sugar, and a quarter of starch ; and, mark me 
(raising her fist clenched in warlike fashion), 
don't you venture to leave the carriage till 
you've made every one of the purchases ! Pur- 
chase by the sample, Drudge, and let 'em un- 
derstand you pay in silver !" 

The sorrel twins, now, after repeated admo- 
nitions from a whip in the hand of Mr. Moses 
Underhill, succeeded in getting themselves in 
motion. The carriage wheels had scarcely re- 
volved more than twice or three times, before 
the voice of Mrs. Drudge was heard, calling 
after them, and the person of Mrs. Drudge was 
seen in pursuit of the vehicle. Moe Underhill, 
allowed her to enjoy a delightful little trot on 
the highway before he condescended to arrest 
his promising span. 

" Stop, Moses, stop, stop, stop !" cried Mrs. 



Drudge, in an ascending musical voic c . "Here's 
the key : you've forgotten the coach-door key !" 

At length she overtook the fugitive vehicle, 
and handed the key up to the youthful worthy 
on the driver's seat, " Do you hurry back, Moses, 
to cut that asparagus and make that nosegay." 

" Yes, misses, I'll make you a very nice nose- 
gay when I come back — a very nice one," an- 
swered Mr. Underhill. Whether he ever lived 
to come back and make that nosegay is a matter 
about which the reader's mind will be placed 
perfectly at rest at the sequel. 

" Drudge !" cried his amiable spouse once 
more, conveying her little sharp face and vicious 
gray eyes inside of the carriage window. " You 
may bring me a bunch of black-fish, if Tom 
Haddock has any fresh from the water : and 
don't you get out till you've brought the fish as 
you value your life ; — and as for the starch — 
recollect — it's for my own personal collars, and 
not for yours — so you'll get first quality." 

Hereupon Mrs. Drudge departed, Mr. Drudge 
fell back in his seat from the awful state of sus- 
pense in which he had listened to the last in- 
junction of his charming lady, and the carriage 
trundled or crawled along the road. 

They travelled on quietly at a moderate pace 
for the first mile and a half of the distance to 
Plumpitts, when suddenly, as they were turning 
a corner of the road and driving close by the 
side of a stone-wall, Moe Underhill was shot 
softly from the carriage-box over the fence and 
landed on his feet, in the neighboring field. 
Old Drudge was slumbering at the moment, but 
waking up a little while after and looking out 
at the window, he discovered a heavy-headed 
apparition bearing a marvellous general resem- 
blance in outline and movement to Mr. Moses 
Underhill, scudding rapidly across the fields. 
It was, however, only the thought of a moment 
with Drudge — and as the sorrel twins made no 
such discovery, they journeyed forward at their 
old pace the same as if nothing had happened. 
At length, they reached the brow of Plumpitts' 
hill, and feeling no restraining hand at the rein 
they scampered down the declivity in lively 
style, like a span of runaway spectres; and 
rushed into the village with the old family car- 
riage clattering at their back, at such speed as 
to bring the best part of the population into the 
road, and the remainder to their doors and win- 
dows. 

The horses being without guidance aimed for 
a public horse-trough, in the centre of the vil- 
lage, at which they had a chance of obtaining 
a few stray oat-grains, left there by more fortu- 
nate and better-fed quadrupeds that came to 
water. 

The eyes of every adult inhabitant of Plum- 
pitts were levelled forthwith at the family car- 
riage of Mrs. Drudge, which was well known in 
the village; and on the discovery of Mr. Drudge 
in one corner of the same, conversation like the 
following arose : 

" Ah ! ha ! — there's Tishy's private prison 
again, and her poor-travelling jail-bird !" said 



DISASTERS OF OLD DRUDGE. 



75 



an idle tailor, who had ahandoned his shop- 
board and gathered with a group of men and 
women in front of the post-office. 

" How old Drudge is beginning to look !" 
rejoined the post-master's wife, with her hands 
under her apron. " Upon my word he looks 
ten years older than uncle Si Purdy — and he's 
sixty last Christmas, ten o'clock at night !" 

" Enough to make a man look old, madam," 
said the tailor, who was a consequential little 
personage with a figurative turn of mind and a 
firm expression of mouth, " to be riding about like 
a lobster in a stew-pan with the lid on, in that 
horrid box of Tishy Drudge's. If I was Joel 
Drudge I'd kill her — yes ! I'd maul her to death : 
I'd hold her up to the sun on a three-pronged 
pitchfork, and toast her to a cinder and go into 
a regular state-prison at once as an incendiary ! 
I'd commit some dreadful crime — that would I — 
rather than be confined in that close crib. It 
breaks a man's spirits like pie- crust, such a 
thing does ! He can't work — he can't do any- 
thing — he can't pay his debts ! it incapaci'ates 
him !" 

The name of this tailor happened to be John 
Merritt, and the reader will at a thought, dis- 
cover the happy pertinency and deep feeling 
with which these remarks must have been de- 
livered. 

" Why," said Tom Haddock, the fisherman, 
who had paused with his wagon in front of the 
post-office, to join in the conversation, " he's 
just as silly in there — Old Drudge is — as a con- 
sumptive mackerel, in my big fish-car. But 
where, in the name of the great Striped Bass 
that Bill Horley caught last week, where is Moe 
Und'rill ? I saw the carriage come rattlin' in, 
without pilot or helmsman, or a man at the 
sculls, as I was crossin' the P'int. ( There 
must be something the matter,' says I to Harry 
Shaddle, ' or, you may depend on it, the boy 
would have hold of the tiller !' " 

"You say truly, Thomas," said the tailor, 
** something must be the matter, or Moses Un- 
derbill would be in his place on the carriage 
seat. Joel Drudge couldn't have driven the 
horses down, sitting inside the vehicle, unless 
his neck was as long as a crane's and he had 
arms to match ! Underhill is a wild youth and 
may have pitched himself headlong from the 
seat out of despair !" 

* What the devil would he do that for ?" ask- 
ed Tom Haddock. 

" Because his master can't pay his honest 
debts ?" answered Mr. Merritt. 

" That's more than likely," said a small, thin- 
shouldered old man, with a pair of smart, spark- 
ling eyes that constantly gave the lie to the rest 
of his countenance, which was dull, heavy and 
devoid of meaning. " That's more than likely, 
for didn't Dolly Hiedlebrook's cat hang herself 
in a boot-jack, because her mistress got too 
poor to keep a cow ?" 

" Cats love cream, and Moses Underhill loves 
money, and I shouldn't be surprised if he had 



got off and drowned himself out of mere re- 
spectability," added Mr. Merritt. " It isn't re- 
spectable for a man to owe a tailor's bill." 

" It isn't, Mr. Merritt — by no means it isn't, 
and Tishy Drudge ought to be ashamed of her- 
self for not keeping her husband in good clothes 
and them paid for — her owning as she does — the 
Hum'stead — and ready moneys out at interest 
too !" asserted the postmaster's lady, with an 
air of virtuous indignation. 

" He shall pay mine, I know !" cried the lit- 
tle tailor, in as towering a passion as a little 
tailor can be supposed, by the liveliest stretch 
of imagination, capable of elevating himself to. 
" If it costs me all the thread and thimbles in 
my shop — and a year's beeswax too — I'll bring 
him up to the mark. John Merritt won't be 
trifled with any longer." 

" You're right, Merritt," said the thin-shoul- 
dered man. " I wouldn't submit to it !" 

" Merritt ! Merritt ! who are you talking 
to ?" asked the little tailor, ferociously, looking 
down from the eminence to which the tempest 
of passion had whirled him. " My name is Mr. 
Merritt— Mr. John Merritt !" 

While this dialogue was passing, a new per- 
sonage was approaching the grand centre of at- 
traction — Mrs. Drudge's family carriage. This 
was a broad-built, heavy gentlemen on horse- 
back, with a marvellously well-developed per- 
son, presenting about the same breadth of sur- 
face to the eye, from whatever point he might 
be viewed : whether from the north, the south, 
the east, or the west. In a word it was Harry 
Shaddle, the fat landlord of the tavern on the 
Point. He rode up to the window of the carriage 
and looking in, exclaimed, " What, Joel, in the 
old squirrel cage again ! — Why ar'n't you out, and 
trotting down to the P'int to take a cup with us ? 
eh ! solitary confinement's dry work as the gad-fly 
thought when he was corked in an ounce vial !" 
With this the portly landlord gave a hearty 
laugh, which shook not only his own wide do- 
main of flesh but even reached the nag upon 
which he was riding, and nearly shook the lit- 
tle animal off his legs. This self-same laugh 
had made his fortune. " Where's Moe ?" 

" Where is the boy ?" cried Drudge, after 
thrusting his head out of the carriage, and now, 
for the first time, investigating the driver's seat. 

" I heard that you come in without a driver, 
Joel, or else the Old One was setting up there 
unsight, unseen — for your horses did come down 
the hill, as if they had the very devil at their 
heels !" 

" I'm afraid the boy's thrown off and killed — 
my God ! what will Tishy say ?" exclaimed 
Drudge, elevating his hands and eyebrows and 
speaking from the very bottom of his ventricle. 
" I thought I saw him pitched from the seat, 
but it's like a dream." 

" Oh, don't disturb yourself, my old boy, I 
don't believe Moe's dead — or like to be : he 
knows too much for that. But have you heard 
the news, Joel V* 



76 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



"No — what news ? nothing dreadful I hope." 

"Nothing very dreadful: only Quimby's 
broke and blown up on the P'int, as I prophe- 
sied. I knew he couldn't last long again' the 
Old Stand with Harry Shaddle behind the coun- 
ter — though a few of his friends flew off to the 
new perch — and you among the rest, Joel, I'm 
sorry to say !— Quimby's blown up like a smack 
with a pound of gunpowder in the hold, and a 
dropsical vagabond on deck : a limb of the poor 
devil is scattered here and a limb there. Here 
his rotten liver and lights ; there, a decayed leg 
— and for his brains — the harbor-master may 
find them if he can and lay a duty on 'em \" 

" He has made a sad time of it I" 

" Yes ; he's exploded entire, and made an 
assignment out and out ; whereby he assigns 
and sets over to Smith Plevin — assignee, at- 
torney and creditor in chief — five live topers, a 
row of broken-necked brandy bottles, an uncol- 
lected account against Joel Drudge, Esq., a pair 
of musty boots, two odd slippers, a tap-room 
without a customer, and a fishing boat without 
a bottom !" 

" Smith Plevin's the assignee, is he ?" asked 
Drudge, with a pretty thorough knowledge of 
the character of that same Smith Plevin. 

"Yes, Smith is the assignee — and devilish 
tight work he'll make of some of you ! — You'd 
better fight shy of Plumpitts, for he'll be sure 
to snap you up the first time he catches you in 
the county !" 

With this friendly caution Harry Shaddle 
touched his whip to his horse — and rode off, 
sitting erect in his stirrups, and trying to make 
a spectacle of himself, as every fat man does, 
and — to the credit of their efforts be it spoken — 
they generally succeed ! Old Drudge threw him- 
self back in the carriage, and began to cogi- 
tate with all his power of mind (which was by 
no means unlimited) over Quimby's unsettled 
bill — and the fate of Moses Underhill — striving 
to devise some plan to pay the one and imagine 
what had become of the other, when he sud- 
denly descried a man and a boy approaching 
by one of the cross roads that led into the vil- 
lage, and, at the same moment, two other men 
advancing on the other side, from the opposite 
extremity of the same road. 

He soon discovered that the former were Mr. 
Smith Plevin, the attorney, and Moe Underhill ; 
and the latter, John Merritt, in company with 
a man, whose person was unknown to Drudge. 
Smith Plevin, was a middle-sized man, with a 
hard livid countenance, without a drop of blood, 
and a low, bony forehead, made to look still more 
villanous by having his stiff black hair combed 
down over it. 

" You are my prisoner !" said this personage, 
stepping up to the carriage with a heavy bun- 
dle of papers in his left hand, thrusting his 
right hand in at the coach window and grasp- 
ing old Drudge rudely by the collar. 

" You lie, sir, he's mine !" shouted a voice 
from the opposite side of the vehicle, and another 



hand was placed at the same instant upon the 
collar of Drudge's coat. 

"Haul him out, law or no law!" cried a 
second voice from the same quarter. " Drag 
him out, Mr. Skinnings — drag him out — like a 
weasel from an egg-basket ! — he has owed my 
bill long enough, and I will have satisfaction, 
cost what it may." 

At this peremptory direction, which proceeded 
from Merritt the tailor, his companion gave 
Drudge a violent jerk, and attempted to pull 
his person through the window of the vehicle. 

" Hold there, Skinnings, or you'll get in trou- 
ble!" bawled Smith Plevin. "You've been 
breaking the man's close— -frangit clausum. 
Stir an inch further and I'll bring an action for 
him myself! He's our prisoner!" and M*. 
Smith Plevin twitched the body of old Drudge 
with great energy towards himself. " You're a 

malefactor, a plagiendo, and d d fool, Smith 

Plevin !" shouted Skinnings, " and you may 
take that as your counsel-fee in this case !" and 
he passed a pound weight of hard knuckles to 
the account of the small ribs of Attorney Plevin. 

" See that, Moses!" cried Plevin, with quiver- 
ing lip and knees that quaked with apprehension. 
" An assault, with intent to kill ! mark that, Un- 
derhill ! you're good evidence — over fourteen, I 
believe, Moses ? — understand the nature of an 
oath?" 

" Yes, sir !" answered master Moses, readily, 
" yes, sir !" 

" All right," said the attorney, withdrawing 
his hold from Drudge's collar, " that's the sec- 
ond case I've picked up to-day : now get your 
prisoner out, if you can, Skinnings !" 

In accordance with Plevin's ironical advice, 
Skinnings first tried the carriage door ; finding 
that impregnable, he next attempted to draw 
Drudge's body out at the carriage window, but, 
after several strenuous trials, he discovered that 
it was impossible to get more than the head of 
the terrified debtor through, and, as his writ re- 
quired and authorized him to take " his body," 
he was obliged to abandon the attempt. 
Meantime, Smith Plevin stood by, indulging a 
sarcastic laugh, punching Moe Underhill with 
the end of his law-papers, and inviting him to 
observe the " smart practice of Sim Skinnings, 
the best lawyer in the county !" When Skin- 
nings withdrew from the carriage, muttering "it 
wouldn't be safe to break the cursed old door ! 
— let's see what this bright young attorney has 
got to do." Plevin stepped forward with a com- 
placent smirk on his countenance, and placing 
his hand upon the coach-door, turned toward 
Moe Underhill, and, smiling, said, " Moe, ad- 
vance with your iron argument, in other words, 
bring the key. I think we'll introduce a doc- 
ument here that will effectually remove this 
stupid plea in bar." 

At this summons, Mr. Moe Underhill inserted 
his right hand in his right breeches-pocket; and 
it is singular what a wonderful effect that sim 
pie insertion produced on the whole expression 



DISASTERS OF OLD DRUDGE. 



77 



of the boy's broad face; his lower-jaw fell, his 
cheeks were monstrously elongated, and he, all 
at once, looked strikingly like a Shaker in a 
brown study. 

His hands immediately and swiftly penetrated 
into every conceivable pocket about his person ; 
he cross-questioned every nook and corner of 
his clothing, and subjected his hat and boots to 
a series of most searching interrogatories. 

The universal and stunning return from ev- 
ery quarter was an unmitigated non inventus, 
so that Master Moses Underhill had enjoyed 
a beautiful travel on foot, of some half-doz- 
en miles in the bracing country-air, over to 
, the capital of the county, and noti- 
fied Smith Plevin that " Now old Drudge was to 
be caught out of his own county" — all to no pur- 
pose. The horrid reflection crossed his mind, 
that he might have lost the key in jumping from 
the carriage, or in his scamper over the fields. 

That this enterprising young gentleman might 
not be alone in his peculiar style of face, Mr. 
Plevin obligingly drew out his countenance to 
the requisite length, and stood opposite Moe 
Underhill with a responsive extent and sadness 
of feature. At this moment, to increase the 
joys of the worthy couple, Drudge suddenly 
assumed a scruple of courage, and, thrusting 
his red visage out of the coach, familiarly 
charged Moe Underhill with being " a thief 
and a runaway !" 

To which the boy familiarly returned, " Hush 
your jaw, you old victim ! I'll have my pay 
out of you yet, for the beatin' you guv me last 
Thanksgivin'-day !" 

That no single incident might be wanting to 
complete the overwhelming catastrophe, Mr. Sim 
Skinnings, at this juncture, marched up to Mr. 
Smith Plevin, and with a determined manner said, 
" Sir, you were insolent, just now !" and, with- 
out further parley, Mr. Skinnings commenced 
an active assault on the person of the aforesaid 
Mr. Plevin. Now, Skinnings was a tall man, 
with an immoveable face, which looked as if it 
had been carved out of seasoned pine-timber, or, 
rather, as if all his features had been tied up, 
very early in life, in a hard knot, and he had 
found it impossible, ever since, to disentangle 
them. He therefore formed no very pleasant or 
playful belligerent, and, accordingly, began to 
drub his little antagonist horribly at arm's- 
length. Plevin, who, although not framed ex- 
actly on the heroic model, had some sparks of 
manhood in him, thought the game altogether 
too much on one side, and hastily imagining that 
the bargain would be vastly improved by intro- 
ducing a second party into it, plunged his head 
directly into the waistcoat of Mr. Skinnings, 
and commenced plying his arms up and down 
into the face of that eminent gentleman, in a 
parallel line like the pistons of an engine ; and 
Mr. Skinnings began to batter the dorsal pos- 
sessions of Mr. Plevin, with a high, long sweep 
of his arms, after the manner of a smith's largest 
sledge-hammer. 



Mr. Skinnings would have inevitably suc- 
ceeded in breaking in sundry ribs of his antag- 
onist, had it not been for a fortunate bill in 
chancery, of a monstrous solidity and thick- 
ness, which was slumbering in the little law- 
yer's hind coat-pocket ; and Plevin would have 
undoubtedly disfigured the face of Skinnings 
had he not, in an early stage of the attempt 
made his knuckles sore by knocking against 
the hard bronze thereof. While this profes- 
sional battle was proceeding, and general at- 
tention was attracted to its progress, Drudge 
thought it afforded a good opportunity for him 
to attempt a release from his imprisonment. 
With this purpose, he cautiously put his head 
out of one of the openings of the windows, and, 
shrinking his body to its smallest dimensions, 
endeavored to coax it through. He succeeded 
in passing it as far as his third rib, by forcible 
struggles, and there, for some time, he hung, nei- 
ther able to advance nor recede, like a rash 
pickerel that has been caught in a net, and, 
plunging into one of the meshes, imagines it 
may glide through — fixed midway, its glassy 
eyes looking out upon a glorious prospect of es- 
cape, while its tail and the better part of its 
body quiver and wriggle with all the horror of 
confinement and fruitless toil ! At length, by 
a sudden wrench, Old Drudge succeeded in re- 
storing himself to his former position on the 
back seat of the carriage — and there he sat, 
shaking with the dampness of his prison — and 
shaking as if his only remaining chance of en- 
franchisement lay in bursting his prison to 
pieces by the violence of his tremors. 

During all this time the combatants kept 
steadily at their business — growing more heat- 
ed and furious every minute. Suddenly a cry 
of " fire ! fire !" was heard in the upper part 
of the village, and the village engine was seen 
rattling along the main street, and bearing down 
directly upon the mob, gathered about Plevin 
and Skinnings, and, without a moment's delay, 
it began playing, under the direction of Tom 
Haddock, upon the belligerent attorneys. The 
thumping of the engine-arms, the clamors of the 
mob, and the shouts of the brawny fishermen, 
alarmed the hitherto quiet sorrel twins of Mr. 
Drudge, and thinking, perhaps, they had tarried 
long enough in the disagreeable village of Plum- 
pitts, they wheeled about, and clattering past 
the mob, just in time for Old Drudge to receive 
a discharge of the engine-pipe upon his person, 
they scampered off up Plumpitts' hill, on the 
road to the Homestead. 

Through these various events, the day had gli- 
ded nearly to its close. Large, heavy shadows 
began to fall from the trees by the roadside, 
and, crowding nearer together, and dilating 
more and more every moment as the sun rapid- 
ly declined, they darkened the track upon which 
the driverless horses were travelling. Now and 
then the shadow of a locust or wild-cherry-tree, 
that stood solitary in the centre of a field would 
blink in, like some monstrous goblin, at the 



78 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



window of the carriage, and remind its occu- 
pant that night was swiftly approaching. A 
tree-toad or cricket would repeat the tidings in 
a doleful voice, and Old Drudge, trembling with 
the chilliness of his prison and apprehension of 
some peril or other, chattered in reply. 

They passed a swamp — and the wind came 
sighing and roaring through it like a mad devil, 
and a swollen stream rushed dismally through 
the tufts of dark grass and bog-weeds. Just as 
he had fairly passed this gloomy spot, he heard a 
rattling noise upon the roof of the coach, as if the 
branches of some overhanging tree were raking 
over it. He put out his head, timidly, to discov- 
er what it was — and received a violent stroke 
from some unseen object obliquely over the face. 
Thinking it might have been a straggling 
limb, as soon as he recovered from the shock, 
he thrust his face out of the opposite window. 
Again he received a stroke, heavier than the 
first, and a gruff voice exclaimed, " Now out of 
the other I" Poor Drudge, terrified and trem- 
bling, and not daring to disregard the behest of 
the invisible, fearfully exhibited his head from 
the other window. A third blow made his sconce 
ring again — and the voice bawled, " Now the 
other ! M He obeyed again — thwack ! — thwack ! 
— thwack ! and a shower of violent blows rained 
about his ears and face until they brought blood. 
This game was kept up for a quarter of an hour 
— when the voice dismounted, and, thrusting 
into the carriage, whispered grimly, " Moe 
Und'rill's compliments to Mrs. Tishy Drudge, 
and tell her she can roast you for Thanksgiving 
as you've been pounded tender !" A smart suc- 
cession of sharp, quick strokes lit upon the 
backs and flanks of the sorrel brethren, and 
they hurried away as if they thought Mrs. 
Drudge herself was at their heels. 

This unusual speed soon brought them to the 
door of the Homestead, and, in attempting to 
turn rapidly into the large gate that led to the 
corn-crib, they overturned the disastrous and 
ill-fated vehicle. At the point which they had 
selected for its overthrow, there was a huge, 
sharp-cornered rock, planted there to guard the 
gate-posts, and the overturn was accompanied 
with a loud crash. The work of the moment 
accomplished the grand purpose of the day ; it 
shivered one of the carriage-doors, and left Old 
Drudge sprawling at the opening, with one leg 
sticking out of the opposite window in mid air. 
The sudden display of a light at the door of the 
house startled the animals, which had stopped 
and stood stock-still when the catastrophe oc- 
curred ; they moved forward a few steps, and 
Old Drudge was detected crawling forth. 

Bruised, frightened, and hungry as he was, 
he was glad to hobble up stairs and sneak sup- 
perless to bed, rather than encounter one of 
those domestic tempests which had so often 
rattled about his head, and given him, although 
not an aged man, the aspect of a weather-beat- 
en sea-captain, and the familiar title of Old 
Drudge. 



THE UNBURIED BONES. 

" Lost Beauty, I will die, 
But I will thee recover." 
Sir R. Fanshaw's Querer Por Solo Querer. 

About midway between Long island sound 
and the Hudson, there is a glooomy ravine called 
Dark Hollow, which ploughs, as it were, a broad 
and deep furrow between two high ridges of 
land. The Hollow itself is filled with sombre 
woods, and constitutes a sort of legendary womb 
of earth, in which tradition has for many years 
bred its monsters ; supplying the neighborhood 
with a brood of as lusty and good-for-nothing 
fables, as gossip could wish to chirp over at a 
winter's fireside. Among others, there is the 
story of the spectre of the stranger that was 
drowned in the neighboring pond (whose body 
was never discovered), walking in this dim val- 
ley in his sleeves, with his yellow vest thrown 
open, with one short boot and one long one, and 
without a hat, just as he appeared before his 
fishing-boat was overturned — the very costume 
in which he went to the bottom. 

Then there was the Yankee that hung him- 
self on the great black walnut-tree, by the brook, 
with an empty cider flask in his pocket, and whose 
ghost has so unquenchable a thirst, that it has 
been heard, any time the last twenty years, cry- 
ing (in a thick voice, and apparently half-over 
seas) for "more cider !" and " another pull at 
the jug — only one more !" and to the thirsty 
propensities of which ghost, the owners of the 
land below the Hollow attribute the frequent 
dryness that afflicts the channel of the brook. 

Then, on the side of the Hollow, and under 
the shelter of rugged and sturdy oaks, that clam- 
ber up in the dim light, as if eager to breathe 
a purer air, lies nestling, away from the obser- 
vation of the keenest eye, Gaby's Hole ; a mys- 
terious nook, in which, the story goes, a gang 
of hardy counterfeiters, many years ago, estab- 
lished a mint, and spouted forth thence, as 
from a fountain, their streams of impure 
coinage. 

It is said that ruffian forms are even now 
sometimes seen flitting about the mouth of the 
Hole, and that the glare of lawless fires lit 
up so long since, is in cloudy nights reflected 
against the sky. The noise of hammer s, too, 
often mingles with the puffing of a huge bel- 
lows, and, combined, they startle the damp 
cricket from his low pallet on the earth, and 
the fire-bug from his light-house elevation in 
the mountain pine. 

It was near this haunted region, and reclining 
on a slope of the opposite ridge, that Francis 
Whortle gazed into the Hollow. It was a sum- 
mer's afternoon and he had lingered on that par- 
ticular spot, thus questioning the depths of the 
mysterious realm, he knew not why, for several 
hours. 

There was something in his past history that 
might explain this brooding habit, which was 



THE UNBURIED BONES. 



79 



wont to seize and bind him as with a spell by 
the side of running streams, in the twilight of 
thoughtful sunsets, or beneath the melancholy 
boughs of mighty trees. 

Francis Whortle was a youth in the very 
prime and spring-time of life, and yet clouds 
came and passed across his brow as if it had been 
that of an aged man, or one on the remotest 
verge of suffering and care-stricken manhood. 
The story of his sorrow was simple enough, 
though with a touch of almost romantic singu- 
larity. He had loved a beautiful girl — and, as 
he thought, had won her affection in return ; 
when, suddenly, and without any hint or token 
of such an event, she had vanished from the 
neighborhood — vanished like a spirit, none 
could tell at what precise moment, from what 
spot, nor whither. Hope exhausted itself in 
hoping, and dreaming visions of her return, and 
Invention fell dead at the anxious feet of the 
bereaved man's friends — but she never more 
came back. At night a light form, beautiful 
with the hue and the grace of youth, stood often 
at his bedside, and smiled upon him with a deli- 
cate finger on its dewy lips — and vanished si- 
lent and smoothly as the air. Spring came, the 
bright season of expectation and promise, and 
still she tarried. Summer perished in the deep- 
green woods and was buried beneath the Au- 
tumn leaves, yet the lost one was not found. 
Thus time chased hour on hour, and the skies 
smiled and threatened, and after long lingering, 
the swallow and the pigeon returned them their 
strange absence far away, but the sweet girl 
came not in their track, returned not to haunt 
her own familiar dwelling nor to build her 
bower under the calm old eaves of her child- 
hood's home. From the hour of that sad disap- 
pearance, Whortle had yielded himself to an 
unseen influence which led him about from 
place to place, as in a dream. From that mo- 
ment he had rambled hither and thither, through 
wood and field, and placing himself on some 
chosen spot, Avith the soft meadow-brook's mur- 
mur in his ear, or the gentle sound of waving 
branches, he would strain forward with an 
eager gaze and anxious look, as if he awaited 
the sudden presence of the vanished Creature 
from earth or air. 

So busy was his brain with the image of the 
lost one, so nimble and restless his fancy in 
forging comfort for his poor, lone heart, that 
every object in nature at times assumed the 
fairy shape and seemed to walk forth from amid 
surrounding things, palpable to the eye, fresh 
and lovely as in the moment before she had 
gone for ever. That young man's single grief 
brought back for a time all the fair " humanities 
of old religion," and often in the deep wood he 
started at a gentle form gliding swiftly, like a 
dryad, before his view ; or gazed wildly on a 
sweet face smiling responsive to his own from 
the untroubled fountain, a nymph-like counte- 
nance, perishing with the first breath of the 
gazer. It had become his sole employment to 
people all the fields, and meadows, and mar- 



gins, and woodland glades, with the spiritual 
likeness of his vanished mistress. 

With this hope warm at his heart he peered 
earnestly into the deepening shadows of the 
Hollow. In a few moments an airy and grace- 
ful shape sprang, as if from the covert of a 
wild vine ; it was the accustomed gentle form ; 
it turned its face upon the lover ; it smiled — 
and — as the young man lives — it beckons him 
from his lofty seat. He doubts — it pauses — a 
sorrowful look darkens its fair countenance — 
again it smiles and renews the token. This 
time he will not doubt nor waver. He gains 
his feet, and with unusual speed hurries after 
the fair apparition. Within a few paces of 
her, however, he slackens his steps, and follows 
in awe and wonder. Straight through the 
Counterfeiters' dark defile she takes her way, 
without hindrance from stone, bush, or tree : 
following, as he may, he pursues her till she 
winds through a clump of tall, gloomy trees, 
and steps out upon an open space. He has 
stumbled but once, and that was a little way 
back, upon a rusted spade, standing against the 
remains of an old forge or rural fire-place. The 
gentle apparition crosses the glade; she reaches 
a white object that stands out boldly against 
the dark earth, and turning once more upon him 
with a sad smile, she melts, like a dew or a 
snow-flake into the earth. For a moment he 
pauses like one who has seen some strange ob- 
ject in sleep ; but quickly surmounting fear and 
wonder, he hastens to the spot where the vis- 
ionary Creature was lost to his gaze, with a 
high hope beating at his heart, and rising up 
and looking out at his gleaming and eager eyes. 
He discovered a mouldering heap of bones, and 
as his eye wandered about here and there, they 
fell upon something that glimmered in the grass : 
a quick, faint splendor, as of some lightning- 
bug or cricket trailing about his little lantern 
from one blade or one green hillock to another. 
But it shone too steadily for their transitory 
light, and as his thoughts were fixed upon it as 
if it had been the lurking eye of a serpent, he 
i stooped and took it in his hand. It was a plain 
gold ring, soiled slightly by the weather, and, 
with the inscription " Ruth Greenleaf." Hold- 
ing the relic in his hand, he stood like one lost 
in revery, gazing by turns on it and on the 
mouldering bones at his feet. 

Where he had found the ring the fragment 
of an arm-bone lay, but the hand to which it 
had belonged was crumbled and gone. He now 
felt that he was standing by the mortal remains 
of the fair creature who had disappeared so 
long ago, and borne with her his heart into the 
deep forest. It too had mouldered like the 
bones before him; though it had a living tomb, 
his own breast. The apparition had guided 
him kindly to this spot to fulfil a sweet and 
sacred duty: the burial of these fair, white 
relics. How she had perished there, in that 
strange, lone place, he could not guess; whether 
by swift stroke of lightning, by serpent's poison 
tooth, by the sharp pointed pain of sudden inul- 



so 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



ady, or by a deadly hand. The last seemed 
probable, and he thought at once that she had 
been murdered by the ruffian counterfeiters, 
upon whose guilty labor she may have come in 
some one of her girlish rambles through the 
gloomy hollow. They had slain her lest she 
should disclose their hiding-place, and had fled. 
The disordered condition in which he had ob- 
served Gaby's Hole, as he passed rapidly 
through it, strengthened and justified this dim 
conjecture. But though she had lain long in 
the chill air, while the green trees were looking 
down upon her and shaking their green glories 
in vain as a shroud over her, the hour of her 
sepulture had come. Kneeling at the foot of 
the relics, and breathing forth a brief prayer, 
Whortle stepped back a little, and returned with 
a rusty spade in his hand. Selecting a spot on 
which the sunlight fell in the pleasant hours of 
the day, and where no gloomy nor ill-boding 
tree cast its shadow, he struck his spade into 
the mould. As he delved the earth, many 
thoughts swelled into his heart and moistened 
his eyes. 

Here have you lain and crumbled, thought 
he, while I have lived framing idle fables, 
dreaming vainly over the past, and questioning 
the future. The soft spring-shower descends, 
and the wild-rose takes off its infant mask in 
the meadow, and discloses its blushing face to 
the sun, and air, but in vain have those gentle 
drops fallen on you, pale, passionless relics. 
The Winds and the Elements have swept the 
earth, and the air, and the waters quickening 
all things into life; but you, even the loud 
thunder has passed by, and left dull, slumbrous, 
and motionless as ever. Here the fresh dawn 
has poured its ray, and kindled voices and har- 
monies without number in the breast of this 
wild wood ; silent, mournful, and dismantled it 
has found, and left you, once the glorious resi- 
dence of speech and music. Shrunken from a 
fair and fruit-like beauty, where all eyes once 
dwelt, you have rested here — visited by all 
things in nature — the wind, the sunbeam, the 
shower and the evening glory, unknown, hon- 
orless, and unadored. With emotions and fan- 
cies like these he shaped the grave. 

Simple as was the whole scene, it was a sub- 
ject for the painter's finest pencil — for it was 
tinged with many colors of the true sublime. 
A spade, a youth, and a few crumbling bones. 
What is there in these to awaken deep feeling 
or reverential thought ? It is a spiritual pic- 
ture in the midst of busy life. On the high 
ridge they are gathered with the setting sun 
streaming full upon them, while on one side 
husbandmen, joyous with the spirit of plenty, 
are turning their winrows ; on another, nearer 
by, on the margin of the pond, a boisterous 
group are dragging their well-laden fish-net 
ashore, blessing Fortune and the favoring tide. 
Beyond the hollow, up on the by-road that pas- 
ses through the woods, a country school is just 
let loose, and Childhood tumbles with its 
satchel and sportive face into the open air, and 



looks up laughingly to the clear sky. And 
there into that neat farm-house, with its newly- 
painted front, a troop of weddeners is hastening. 

On Whortle delves, and the grave is finished. 
Gently he lays the relics in its bosom, and ere 
he casts back the damp earth on its kindred 
earth, he stands, leaning on his simple com- 
panion in the labor, and gazes long and earnest- 
ly down into the hollow mould. 

He has buried the hallowed bones, and plant- 
ed an evergreen at their head, and as the mel- 
low light of the dying day streams through the 
trees, borrowing a new hue, to add to its thou- 
sand colors, from them, he turns his steps mourn- 
fully away, as if he had laid his own heart there 
with his mistress' dust. 



PARSON HUCKINS'S FIRST 
APPEARANCE. 

At the close of a day in the .early part of 
autumn, a small-built gentleman, in a black 
suit and snowy neckerchief, was sitting in the 
desk of Chatham chapel, with his head resting 
upon his folded hands. From the tall side-win- 
dows, the purple shadows of evening fell upon 
his person, and thronged about his elevated 
place of repose, as if they would bury him en- 
tirely from the gaze. The whole vast body of 
the building began to be filled with darkness 
and gloom, and the different objects — the pews 
— the galleries and aisles, were blended togeth- 
er, and assumed whatever shapes the fancy 
chose to give them. The black-clad gentle- 
man, the sole tenant of this realm of shadows 
and confusion, was the Rev. John Huckins, a 
righteous man of God, who was born with the 
happiest possession that one who intends to 
make piety the business of his life can fall heir 
to, and that was, an indescribably meek and 
evangelical length of feature. He was, at the 
present time, the clergyman of a Christian con- 
gregation that worshipped in the chapel, and 
at the particular moment when he is introduced 
to the reader, was reposing after the fatigues 
of the afternoon Wednesday service, and at the 
same time awaiting the attendance of a few 
professors on a prayer-meeting, which was to 
be held there preparatory to an evening dis- 
course. In the slumber which he was enjoying, 
images of past scenes — of times long bygone — 
vanished away, far away in the dim regions of 
youth, mingled with the events and things and 
creatures of yesterday, and at length he dreamed 
that the very chapel, in which he was seated, 
was touched by the strange magic of sleep, and 
was passing through one of those wild and wiz- 
ard changes which occur only in dreams. He 
beheld before him two beings, with something 
mortal in their garments and bearing, mixed 
with more that was unearthly and spectral in 
their look and the tones of their voice. 

One was short and round-shouldered, with a 



PARSON HUCKINS'S FIRST APPEARANCE. 



81 



long-waisted roundabout on, and the other a 
pale meager figure, with sweat upon his brow, 
which seemed as if it might be the death-damp, 
which he had neglected to wipe away in his 
hurried emergence into light. They both busied 
themselves in unhinging the pew-doors, and 
with huge piles of them upon their shoulders — 
far greater, it seemed, than mere mortals could 
stagger under — they tottered down the aisles, 
and, disappearing at the preacher's feet, return- 
ed in a few minutes empty-handed, and bore 
away a second load. While they were engaged 
in this singular task, they now and then inter- 
changed a word with each other. 

" What do we have to-night ?" asked the 
round-shouldered man. 

"The 'Devil's Due Bill,'" answered his 
companion. 

" What ! * The Devil's Due Bill Honored'— 
in which old Roberts is so capital in Wiggle ?" 

" The same, the very same !" returned the 
meager figure, " and I thank Heaven we've got 
possession again. It was a shame to let these 
canting dogs bark so long in old Chatham ; and 
I could not lay easy in my grave till I helped 
get up another good old piece in her walls !" 

" You're right, Bill — prompter snuff me out 
if you a'n't !" assented the round-shouldered 
personage. "I wonder if they'll all be here 
to-night ?" 

" The whole company, in full force, you may 
depend upon it, and we'll go through it in less 
time than we ever did before — music and all — 
take my word for it." 

When they had completely disposed of the 
doors, they commenced sacking the pews them- 
selves, and carried off the red and brown cush- 
ions, muttering, " Bare benches is good enough 
for the half-price bottoms of the pit !" After 
this they swept the hymn-books, testaments, 
&c, which they found on the pew-shelves, in- 
to a green-baize, and hurried them away with 
the same eagerness, grumbling forth something 
or other about the " saints in the playhouse !'" 

While these two personages were engaged 
in this way, as many as half-a-dozen sallow- 
looking men were perched about the floor of 
the building, on ladders, with painters' jackets 
on, and employed in swiftly executing miniature 
scenes from Shakspere and other dramatists, 
on the naked panel-work of the galleries. In 
the meanwhile, hammers were plying in every 
quarter of the house ; nails were drawn and 
driven, parts of the building taken down and 
parts renewed, with all the dexterity and des- 
patch of jugglery. Presently, all the artisans 
disappeared, whither, no one could guess ; and 
Huckins, astonished at what he saw, and every 
moment expecting some greater wonder, now 
discovered men and women in gay dresses, 
laughing, and full of frolic, entering the first 
gallery, while instead of the humble believers 
and penitents whom he had expected to detect 
creeping up the aisle to prayer-meeting, whole 
hosts of robust sinners, and boisterous boys and 
'prentices poured in upon the floor of the house, 
F 



and took possession of the seats directly before 
his face. In a moment more he heard the faint 
tinkling of a bell, and, turning round, discovered 
an immense curtain, with the picture of a huge 
woman, with flowing robes and a yellow crown 
on her head, rolling gradually toward the ceil- 
ing ; and now, for the first time, as he took his 
seat among the spectators, the conviction en- 
tered his mind that he was in Chatham theatre, 
a wild, wicked boy, yet with some germes of 
childish innocence and purity blossoming about 
his heart, and not the hard, hypocritical man, 
seemingly holy and pure in outward act, while 
all within was barrenness, guile, and a dull, 
gloomy heathendom. The first scene that 
opened upon the audience, exhibited what 
seemed to be the committee-room of a church, 
in which were assembled some seven or eight 
men, transacting business connected with their 
office of trustees or deacons. In dress and de- 
meanor they resembled men with whom Huck- 
ins was familiar, although their size and linea- 
ments in some respects were different. The 
prominent personage of the group was a turtle- 
shaped, middle-sized man, with a brown wig 
and wrinkled countenance, expressive of a dog- 
matical temper and sturdy self-will. 

" It shall be so !" cried this magnate, striding 
up and down the stage, and flourishing a heavy 
walking-stick. " I have made up my mind to 
that point, gentlemen. He has the genuine 
evangelical spirit, I am confident, and that's 
enough for me." 

"And for me," added a second committee- 
man. " He's not a bad speaker, too, for I sat 
beneath the back gallery, and heard distinctly 
every word that he uttered." 

" I stationed myself behind a post," said a 
third, " and took the exact gauge of his voice. 
It is a high tenor, and suits an oblong, low- 
roofed building like ours, exactly. He has my 
vote." 

"The spirit is all that is needed," rejoined 
a fourth, "the pious, Bible spirit. This is 
arms, legs, and voice, to a godly preacher." 

" You are right, my friends," resumed the 
first speaker, smiling complacently upon his 
supporters, " very right, and if he had a voice 
as rough as the Rocky mountains — " 

" But consider, Mr. Huff," interposed a tall, 
lantern-faced man, " we have learned from his 
confidential servant, Wiggle, that he writes his 
sermons in an overcoat, with his hat on, and a 
small bundle always packed up and lying on 
his table. He isn't in the missionary service 
and liable to be summoned away to Burampoo- 
ter or Burmah at a moment's notice, and what 
do all these travelling preparations mean ? Eh ?" 

" Genius !" answered Mr. Huff, peremptori- 
ly. " Genius and the Holy Ghost ! Look 
what a face he has, too. Why the exhibition 
of that face alone at the gate of heaven would 
obtain his instant admission. It's the face of 
a cherub, Higgs !" 

" As Higgs, my senior partner, says," began 
a timid little man, who was rather short of 



82 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



wind, and, consequently, always cut short in 
his attempted observation, as in the present 
case. " Wiggle, his confidential — " 

" Vexation take Wiggle !" cried Mr. Huff. 
"Gentlemen, shall we put it to vote? Are 
you ready ?" In a few minutes, after the cir- 
culation of a respectable black beaver . hat 
among the members of the committee, the 
Rev. John Huckins was announced as duly 
elected pastor of the Church. 

The previous astonishment and wonder of 
the parson was not a little increased at behold- 
ing his own election thus passing before his 
eyes, very much in the same manner as it must 
have passed in private, when he was a candi- 
date before these self-same gentlemen, who 
were thus mysteriously presented to him in the 
full possession of their official functions. 

The scene now shifted, and in the place of 
the deacons in their committee-room, Huckins 
beheld the parlor of a respectable private 
dwelling in which were assembled about twenty 
females, of all ages, old, young, and many in 
the middle period of life. 

" What a powerful discourse I" exclaimed 
one of them, a large woman, with an ugly ex- 
pression of countenance. 

" So earnest, too !" said a young lady. 
"Brother George counted the strokes of his 
arm upon the cushion, and thinks he rose a 
hundred in the course of his sermon : besides 
the two prayers. He is a divine preacher !" 

" This fiery zeal of his will keep us busy fur- 
nishing pulpit covers it is true," said an aged 
female, " but the Lord be blessed ! my eyesight 
continues good, and my right hand hath not 
yet forgot its cunning : I can be serviceable to 
the church even in my old age in this matter. 
Smite the sinner like a strong man, and we'll 
supply the red damask, or plush of good quali- 
ty, as long as the Lord continues our brother 
in the ministry." 

" I propose," said the large lady, " that we 
make the Reverend John Huckins a life mem- 
ber of the ' Pottawatomy Society/ and that a 
committee be named to wait upon the distin- 
guished gentleman to notify him of his election, 
and request him to deliver a series of discour- 
ses, on the importance of clothing juvenile In- 
dians in slops and dickies, in aid of the funds 
of the Pottawatomy Association !" This motion 
was unanimously carried, and the large lady 
was named as said committee. Much further 
general conversation occurred, followed by a 
scriptural banquet of hot rolls and preserves, 
and the " Society" dispersed to their respective 
residences. 

To his utter astonishment, the next scene 
represented a room, in every respect correspond' 
ing with his own study ; and to his great hor 
ror, he felt himself suddenly lifted from his 
seat in the pit, and by some unseen agency 
placed by the side of a small table upon the 
stage and fronting the gaze of an immense au- 
dience. In a moment after his abrupt metem- 
psychosis from the pit, a little man in a buff com- 



plexion and buff-colored pantaloons to match a 
bob-tailed coat and skull-cap, with a brown loaf 
under one arm, and a bowl in his hand, entered, 
with a comic salutation to the audience and an 
irresistible grin on his visnomy, and was greeted 
on his appearance, as if he were a favorite per- 
former. It was Roberts, Old Roberts, the droll 
and comedian of Old Chatham theatre, and 
Huckins at once recognised in him one of the 
actors whom he had seen on that same stage 
many long years ago when a boy. The char- 
acter which this quaint performer at present 
personated, was that of the confidential servant 
of the Rev. John Huckins, over whom he 
seems to have possessed a singular mastery, 
which he had an equally singular mode of ex- 
hibiting. 

" Well, Wiggle," said Huckins, constrained 
by some mysterious influence to take part in the 
play that was, or ' seemed to be, performing : 
" Salary, three thousand — house-rent free, be- 
sides an open account with every member of 
the congregation. That's a handsome busi- 
ness !" 

" Rather handsome, I should say !" replied 
Wiggle. " Summ'at better than looking through 
a noose, like a starved steer through an ox-yoke, 
in this fashion." And running a rapid noose 
in his pocket-handkerchief, he threw it over 
the head of the Reverend gentleman, and drew 
it up till his face reddened like an autumnal 
sunset, while the audience encouraged the 
manoeuvre by the most clamorous applause. 
"There," continued Wiggle, loosening his 
halter, " I'll let you off this time, but mind, I'm 
to have twenty per cent, and marriage fees !" 

" I thought," returned Huckins, " it was to 
be the naked twenty per cent. Nothing was 
said about the fees before." 

" Oh, the fees — I must have the fees, or do 
you see," said Wiggle, knocking the parson's 
broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, " you'll be 
furnished with a night-cap that admits no 
waking, and when it's drawn on you, go to sleep 
for good and all." 

" Well, well," said the parson, " take your 
own way, but be careful and not a word about 
the—" 

" A— r— " 

" Hush," said Huckins, " don't breathe the 
word in this hemisphere, or we're done for !" 

" You must pay me the fees too," continued 
the remorseless Wiggle, " as you receive them. 
They're generally paid in gold, and there's a 
premium you know. D'ye understand ?" 

And to awaken Mr. Huckins to a lively per- 
ception of what he meant, he punched him 
playfully in different parts of the person, and 
concluded by placing his hand gathered like a 
trumpet at his ear, and uttering, in a portent- 
ous whisper, the word " Arson !" 

Now whether the terror and paleness which 
invariably afflicted Huckins at the mention of 
this dissyllable arose from the retrospect and 
reminiscence of some past conflagration in 
which he had participated, or from his looking 



PARSON HUCKINS'S FIRST APPEARANCE. 



forward, with prophetic eye, to the " great 
burning," in which he might, perhaps, reason- 
ably expect to participate more deeply, it would 
not be wise, to conjecture at this early stage of 
the business. 

"Do you think there's the slightest — the 
faintest chance of detection ?" gasped Huckins. 

"None at all, not as much as would convict 
a grasshopper of wearing pumps, I warrant 
you, if you'll keep your face stretched out to the 
right length. Do you practise as I told you ?" 

" Yes twice a day." 

" Mornin' and evenin' I suppose, before a 
glass. You'd better stretch it in a boot-jack 
than let it dry and shrink up — for you'd look 
like the very devil if it wasn't for that smooth 
face of yours, Jack." 

" You haven't said anything of the overcoat 
and so forth — have you ?" asked Huckins. 

" Only hinted a little of it to Higgs, one of 
the committee — who was rather unfavorable to 
your election — thinking* it might give him an 
idea of what a great preacher you was, and 
what wonderful talent you had to write your 
sermons in a box-coat !" 

" Be careful, Wiggle — for Higgs is a sharp, 
keen man, and already suspects something : 
and it's safest to be ready for travel at short 
notice, isn't it ?" 

" By all means. Be prudent, and we'll feather 
our nests and fill our pockets out of these inno- 
cents yet. Preach stanch sermons — strong 
flavor of brimstone — make long prayers and 
loud ones, and live on vegetables in public — 
and our fortunes are made !" 

" Ay, ay," said the parson, " don't fear me ; 
and hark, Wiggle, be particularly careful not 
to have anything to say to that fellow Morfit. 
I believe he knew me when I was here before." 

" What, the lean affidavit-maker ? — I wouldn't 
speak to the starveling, if we two were on a 
desert island famishing — if he had a broiled 
woodcock in his hand, basted in its own drip- 
pings, and would divide it for the asking." 

Here the facetious Wiggle slipped his scull- 
cap into his coat pocket, perched the bowl upon 
the crown of his head, took a huge mouthful 
from the brown loaf under his right arm, lifted 
his coat-tails in a playful manner toward the 
audience with his left, and amid a tempest of 
huzzas and shouts of" Old Roberts for ever !" 
made his exit. The tall woman with her flow- 
ing robes and yellow crown, gradually emerged 
from the eanvass as the curtain fell, and Parson 
Huckins seated, he could not tell where, in the 
confusion of his dream, heard the free comments 
of the audience on what had passed. 

" He's a desperate villain," said a young 
man in a pea-jacket, crushing a play-bill in his 
hand as he spoke. " But Wife's too much 
for him !" 

" I've seen many just such weasel-faced fel- 
lows as this parson !" said a dry, little old 
man, " And I wouldn't trust one of 'em with 
my finger parings." 

" What do you think will become of Huc- 



kins ?" asked a sharp-nosed man, with eyes that 
projected like a lobster's ; leaning forward into 
the face of the dry old man. 

" Why, he'll be hung," answered the little 
old man, emphatically, " or turn politician, 
which will amount to the same thins in the 
end !" 

" I think he'll marry the old lady of the Pot- 
tawatomy Association," suggested the young 
gentleman in the pea-jacket. 

" We shall see !" said the old man :— the bell 
tinkled — the curtain rose, and exhibited the 
same seene as the last, with Huckins at the 
small table, and Mr. Huff seated opposite. 

" If it could be made out scripturally, it 
would afford me great satisfaction," said Mr. 
Huff. 

" It can be, sir, I assure you ; I shall be able 
to show beyond doubt or controversy, that every 
human being now on the face of the earth must 
suffer the flames, except my humble self, and 

the majority of the deacons of church; in 

which number, Mr. Thomas Huff, I am happy 
to say, holds no mean position." 

" Thank you, sir, thank you ; but have you 
sufficient texts and apposite passages ?" 

"Ample, my good sir, ample," answered 
Parson Huckins. " Excerpts and quotations 
from Isaiah and the Revelation, as long and 
heavy as the weaver's beam, wherewith Golias 
went forth against the children of Israel." 

"Really," continued the Pharisaical little Mr. 
Huff, rubbing his hands and clucking quietly 
like a hen — " Really, this will be the happiest 
event of my life since my election as deacon. 
What a pleasant time we will have in heaven, 
Brother Huckins ! a little select company of 
saints, feeding on the pleasant pastures of the 
skies, like the remnant of a countless flock of 
ewes and sheep, scattered hither and thither by 
a storm ; while hundreds of thousands of poor 
wretches will be groaning and burning and 
crying out in Tophet : provided you get them 
there scripturally." 

" It shall be done, sir !" said Huckins, con- 
fidently. 

" Mark me, I deny the doctrine — though I 
must confess it looks reasonable — unless you 
support it stoutly bv texts and bandages of Holy 
Writ !" 

" Fear not," asrain answered the parson, " I 
will bring the Bible to bear directly upon the 
point, as if it had been shot from the mouth of 
a cannon : and many will be the poor sinner 
that would like to come under our blanket, 
when the tempest and lightning, and bombs 
and hand-grenades of Almighty wrath are fall- 
ing about his ears !" 

« We are safe ?" asked Mr. Huff, with an 
anxious wrinkle on his brow. " You are sure 
of that?" 

" Beyond peradventurc — as secure from hell 
as if we were insured in a fire company," 
answered Parson Huckins, somewhat profanely : 
but it was in a dream, and perhaps the 
man knew not what he spake. Anyhow, the 



84 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



two grave and pious gentlemen here sat quiet 
about the space of a minute, casting their eyes 
toward the roof, and indulging in inward 
laughter, which at length overflowed, and ran 
out at their eyes and over their faces like tears. 

After this, the parson produced a Bible and 
a map of the world : and proceeded to illustrate 
his views. 

" This," said he, pointing out one text, " this 
carries off all the heathen — all these lands 
around which I haA^e drawn a black line : Afri- 
can, Patagonian, Indian, Bedouin Arab, dwarf 
Laplander — and the whole brood. This," se- 
lecting a second, "despatches the Catholic 
countries — marked red in the map — and this 
undoubted passage," taking a third, " deals the 
fire upon Protestant Europe and Botany Bay." 

" Botany Bay !" exclaimed Huff, in astonish- 
ment. 

"Yes — there's a special clause for New 
South Wales in this text. Nothing else could 
be intended. As for America, there's no need 
of scriptural denunciation, for we know from 
our own eyes' testimony that it deserves no 
less. The state of moral destitution in this 
country, Mr. Huff, is absolutely awful ! Sodom 
and Gomorrah ! — Sodom and Gomorrah !" 

" Will the town of Greenwich, Connecticut, 
be saved, think you ?" asked Huff. 

"Not a soul, from the town clerk to the 
county judge !" answered the parson, who knew 
that said town of Greenwich was Huff's birth- 
place, and that he had been handled rather 
severely there by the county court, in a little 
affair of apportioning money from his pocket 
for the support of a hedge-born child. 

" Thank God !" thereupon cried the deacon, 
when Huckins had uttered this verdict, and 
showed him where he had entirely blotted out 
the irreligious borough with a huge ink spot. 

" I feel grateful to you, Parson Huckins, for 
these comforting doctrines," said Huff, taking 
the parson warmly by the hand. " Continue 
steadfast in preaching and upholding them — 
and that matter of the increase of salary — 
you understand ?" And with this broken sug- 
gestion he departed. 

The curtain dropped, and the next scene dis- 
covered Mr. Higgs, solus, striding up and down 
the stage, apparently laboring under high ex- 
citement. 

" This is not to be borne," said he. " Here 
comes a fellow, the Lord knows whence, and 
exhibits a furlong of feature one day over the 
pulpit top, and consigns the whole audience 
peremptorily to the pit, as if they were a basket 
of spoiled salmon, and the next day, as the Lord 
liveth, he is chosen paster of the congregation. 
Why I would rather hear a fire-bell ring in 
midsummer than his voice : his tones are those 
of a radish-girl, and his gestures the contortions 
of a rheumatic sailor undergoing the bastinado. 
I hate such fellows worse than a stone-mason 
hates a rat about his foundations. He deals his 
brimstone about as freely as if the whole audience 
were infected with the bilious fever, or were a 



parcel of scoundrel dogs with the distemper. 
He seems to have constituted himself a sort of 
eternal watchman to cry in the great burning. 
His discourse is stuck full of pitch and cinders, 
and one could not be reasonably surprised to 
see him spit flame. But somehow he hath ob- 
tained strange mastery over Huff (a credulous, 
ignorant old man, who believes everything he 
hears, and a self-willed one, who strives to im- 
pose his novel discoveries on every one he 
meets) and other of our people. The Potta- 
watomy Association is again in motion — and 
Heaven knows what absurdity these cackling 
old women will give birth to !" 

Mr. Higgs now made his exit, and the next 
scene displayed a cobbler's stall, in which a 
long lean man was seated on a bench at work, 
and standing by his side our old friend Wiggle. 

" So you find this a profitable business," saiJ 
Wiggle, " this affidavit making ?" 

"It helps a little inthard times," answered 
the cobbler. " I can turn off at the rate oi 
three affidavits and two pairs of boots a week, 
and that pays pretty well." 

" But Mr. Morfit, I should think there would 
be no limit to the amount of business you might 
drive in the former line. If I understand it, all 
you have to do is to sign your name and kiss 
the book." 

" Ah ! you know very little of the profession," 
said Morfit, with a sigh ; " I have found, from 
considerable experience, that I can't stand more 
than one affidavit a day. I tried for a little 
while after I commenced, but I found the oaths 
lay heavy on my conscience at night, and I put 
it on regimen, one a day." 

" Who are your chief employers, Mr. Mor- 
fit ?" 

"The quack doctors: I supply them with 
sworn certificates. A politician now and then 
engages me just before an election ; and I oc- 
casionally go into court, in important cases, to 
help out the evidence." 

" What are your terms ? So much a folio, 
or such a per centage on the profits ?" 

" I see, Mr. Wiggle, you are entirely ignorant 
of this branch of business," said Morfit, with a 
ghastly grin. " A gentleman wants something 
in my line, he comes in, < Morfit,' says he, f an 
affidavit on the virtues of the " Buffalo Embro- 
cation," and a pair of light boots, both ready by 
Saturday.' Very well, say I. « In Court,' says 
an attorney — I have an extensive acquaintance 
among attorneys — « In court, Morfit, Saturday 
morning, case of Borrowe vs. Bustard, action 
of libel, swear bad character for Bustard — and 
two pairs of best made French slippers for 
plaintiff.' " 

" Well," said Wiggle, " when will you have 
this affidavit of mine done, about Huckins ?" 

" Let me see, this is Wednesday ; two certifi- 
cates for Dr. Spike, that his pills are valuable 
in clarifying cider — swear to two barrels cleared 
of sediment by a single box ; affidavit for the 
politician, that Quirks, opposition candidate, 
knocked his cartman in the head with a cart- 



PARSON HUCKINS'S FIRST APPEARANCE. 



86 



ang, and destroyed foursquare inches of skull, 
because said cartman refused to vote his em- 
ployer's tickei ! — This is a busy week, Wiggle, 
just before the fall election, but as you're an 
old friend, I'll have this of yours for you to-mor- 
row noon." 

" Do you understand what its contents are 
to be ?" 

" That deponent was acquainted with said 
Huckins in Massachusetts, while he was study- 
ing theology ; knew him to be pious, correct in 
deportment, highly esteemed, &c." 

" That's it, Morfit," said Wiggle ; " it's only 
to satisfy the private scruples of one of the 
deacons, who says he never heard of Huckins 
before. To-morrow noon." 

" True as a heel-tap !" answered the cobbler. 
" What's the number of the parson's dwelling." 

" Oh, I'll caU for it," said Wiggle ; « but 
our number's street." 

" Very good. Good day, Wiggle." 

" Good day to your honor !" and Wiggle de- 
parted, with an entirely original grin, which 
drew his whole countenance into a single wrin- 
kle, by some mysterious motion of the muscles, 
in the same manner as an old lady's work-bag 
is drawn into a snug ball of silk, by aid of the 
string. 

The audience encored ; he returned, and re- 
newed the wonderful face, again departed — the 
scene shifts — and enter the ugly old lady of the 
" Poitawatomy Association," and Mr. Higgins. 

" As I was saying, Mr Higgins," said the old 
lady. " I am to wait upon Parson Huckins to- 
morrow, and notify him of his life -members hip 
in the Pottawatomy, and solicit him to deliver 
a course of lectures, or a single lecture, on the 
present indelicate style of Indian dress, and the 
propriety of substituting trousers and body-coats 
in its stead. You will accompany me, will you, 
Mr. Higgins ?" 

" Higgs, my senior partner, says — " proceed 
ed Mr. Higgins. 

" Oh, yes, I understand," interposed the old 
lady. " If the medal was ready we might call 
upon him to-day. Whether to present it to him 
standing or kneeling — " 

" I should think," again said the unfortunate 
Higgins, who seemed destined never to finish a 
sentence, "as Higgs — " 

" Or with my hat on or off," continued the 
old lady, not heeding her companion ; " in my 
new calico, or my cloth habit. I must consult 
the society. I never would have undertaken this 
task if I had known how many difficulties and 
perplexities would attend it. Anyhow, we must 
elect Parson Huckins a member of our ' Short- 
stitch and Long-stitch Benevolent Union ;' and 
then I shall resign !" 

" Mrs. Furbelowe !" exclaimed Higgins. 

" He's a sweet man — a pious, sweet man ; I 
could almost worship him — Oh, Huckins, it's 
too good for my soul !" 

" Mrs. Furbelowe !" again cried Higgins, 
" at what hour — " 

" To-morrow noon— to-morrow noon !" ex- 



claimed Mrs. Furbelowe, waving him away ; 
"meet me at the parson's — sweet Parson 
Huckins !" 

The act curtain fell, and as the music (which 
had a wild, unearthly tone in that building, 
where it had been so long silent) played its full 
tide of melody upon the audience from its airy 
tubes, the groundling critics again indulged in 
strictures on the performance. 

" The marriage will surely come on in the 
last act !" said the young man in the pea-jack- 
et. " Mrs. Furbelowe sighs like a broken- 
winded bellows, and means to trap the parson." 

" There'll be a riot yet," said the sharp-nosed 
man with the lobster eyes, " don't you think 
there will ?" 

" No such thing !" answered the dry, little, 
old man. " Huckins will be made a bishop or 
secretary of state before the play's done. Wig- 
gle wasn't as good in this act." 

" He'll brighten up in the next i" timidly sug- 
gested the young man in the pea-jacket. 

" He will !" answered the dry, little, old man, 
sententiously. 

A shrill whistle was heard, the bell tinkled, 
the curtain rose, and disclosed the worthy Mr. 
Morfit, in an open street, eagerly eyeing a re- 
spectable two-story house, with the name of 
" John Huckins" on a broad silver door-plate. 

" This is the house," said the affidavit-ma- 
ker, " and I must get a sight of the reverend 
gentleman — so as to know his person if I should 
be confronted with him. That must be him," 
casting his eye down the street, towards a per- 
son approaching in that direction — " black suM 
of broadcloth — auburn hair (making entries in 
a note-book) — a slow, cautious gait — limps a 
little — about the middle height; now for his 
face— 'long featured, pious — good heavens ! it's 
my old friend — hush ! I won't mention it in the 
street, or we'll have a hanging on the nearest 
lamp-post — ho ! here comes Wiggle, too — I must 
tell him some lie about my being here, though I 
needn't swear to it. How are you, Wiggle ?" 

" Ah ! my man of oaths and French slippers, 
my pink of swearing and sole-leather — how are 
you, and what are you doing in this quarter of the 
town ?" said Wiggle, striking the open palm of 
his broad hand upon his back, like the fluke 
of a Norwegian sperm-whale of the largest 
class. 

" Merely looking out for a few subjects for 
affidavits," answered Morfit. " Two of the al- 
dermen, opposed to our party, live in those two 
double-houses." 

" Well, what can you swear of them ?" asked 
Wiggle ; " that they are four feet about the 
girth, and split the seams of their coats open 
with fat, like a full peascod in the month of 
August ?" 

" No ; but one of them has purple embossed 
paper in his fanlights — and the other, a span 
of high-headed light bay horses." 

" Suppose you could swear one of them 
kept a stud of wild tigers, and had a polar-bear 
for a coachman — would it help you any /*' 



86 



THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



" To be sure, Pd give any amount of money 
if I could swear to that effect, without being 
set down by the whole city for as great a liar 
as the town-clock I" 

" How so, my worthy fellow ?" 

" Why, you see," responded Morfit, with a 
sly leer, "quadrupeds and villains is intimately 
connected ; if a man rides on horseback, he's a 
rogue ; in a one-horsed vehicle, he's a scamp ; 
and if he ventures in a coach or barouche of 
his own — God save us ! — he's a desperate ras- 
cal. Let him trudge on foot, and wear out 
sole-leather — and, Heaven bless him ! he's an 
honest man ; poor, but honest. That's our 
creed !" 

" Well, I must in, in spite of your wonder- 
ful new discovery in ethics," said Wiggle, work- 
ing his eyeballs with his thumbs, so as to im- 
press Morfit with the conviction that it was all 
there — namely, in his eye. " We're to have grand 
times at our house, this morning. Two of the 
trustees is to call — the Botherwhatamy Society 
presents a pewter dining-set to the parson, and 
I'm to serve up a basket of the * pure juice of 
the grape' — good day, Morfit — another time — 
happy to see you — good day — good day !" 

And he glided in at the hall-door, with both 
hands extended, as if in the act of swimming 
out of reach of further dialogue with the affi- 
davit-maker. 

"Well," said Morfit, when left alone, "I 
may as well disappear too, and I'm afraid I 
shall be obliged to adulterate your ' pure juice' 
with a few drops of that unpleasant elixir called 
justice. Here's for the police." Stretching his 
neck, like some meager bird of prey, bringing 
his coat close together, and knocking his hat 
over his brows, he put off at fall speed, down 
the street. 

In a few minutes the stage was occupied by 
the ugly old lady of the Pottawatomy Associa- 
tion, who came in puffing and blowing, and look- 
ing like Vesuvius on the eve of an eruption, 
with Higgins running at her side. 

" A sultry day, Mr. Higgins," said she, paus- 
ing and unfurling a white pocket-handkerchief, 
wherewith she wiped her picturesque face. " A 
very sultry day — be careful, or that medal will 
melt — see that it's snug in the basket, if you 
please, Mr. Higgins." 

"Yes, ma'am," answered the little gentle- 
man, uttering the first sentence that he had 
been allowed to finish since his appearance in 
the performance. 

" I wish I had thought to pack it in ice !" 
said Mrs. Furbelowe, looking wise, " it would 
be so cooling and grateful to John's hands." 

" What John ?" gasped Higgins, in amaze- 
ment. " What John are you speaking — " 

" Oh, the parson — I meant the parson," an- 
swered the old lady, blushing slightly, " I was 
too scriptural, that was all. In the New Testa- 
ment, the apostles and disciples are so familiar, 
it's really a picture to the mind, Mr. Higgins. 
I wish Mr. Huckins would allow me to call him 
John ; it would be delightful, wouldn't it ?" 



Before Higgins could furnish an answer, 
they were within Parson Huckins's hall, and 
the door had closed. 

In a moment or two more, the two deacons, 
Messrs. Huff and Higgs, were discovered pass- 
ing through the street, in the same direction. 

" What think you of our new parson, now ?" 
said Huff, with a smile on his wrinkled visage. 

" Worse and worse," answered Higgs ; " I 
have not seen the certificates he promised, yet, 
and, from the violent language of condemnation 
that he uses in the pulpit, toward others, I doubt, 
more and more, his own Christian character. 
Anyhow, I should like to have some evidence 
of it." 

" You are on your road to it," said Huff. " If 
certain proofs that he is to lay before me, are 
not sufficient, you must be, in truth, hard of be- 
lief — strong, overwhelming, gospel proofs !" 

" Some, such, I need," said Higgs, firmly, " and 
nothing less will serve my purpose. Christian 
churches, Mr. Huff, are getting too much in the 
habit of selecting their pastors as showmen 
choose their lions, for the loudness of their roar, 
or, like jugglers, for the quantity of false fire 
they can spit from their lips." 

" Ah !" interposed Huff, " there you are, 
Brother Higgs, on your old heresy. You were 
always in favor of packing away Christians 
coolly and comfortably, and despatching them 
from this world as if the journey to heaven were 
no more than a pleasant excursion by watei, to 
a country-town, in September. But nothing, in 
my mind, can supply the Lord's household with 
purified and holy occupants but fire — fire — fire ; 
the beginning, the middle, and the end of Scrip- 
ture !" 

" Why men, Mr. Huff, are surely something 
more than mere vessels of potter's clay, whose 
bad qualities are to be burnt out by the 
flame." 

" Never mind, come in, come in, and your 
scruples will melt the moment Parson Huckins 
opens his mouth," said Huff; and at that mo- 
ment they were ushered into the same building 
that had received Mrs. Furbelowe and her com- 
panion. 

The next scene disclosed the parlor of Parson 
Huckins's dwelling, with the parson, the two 
deacons, Mrs. Furbelowe, of the Pottawatomy 
Association, and Mr. Higgins assembled therein. 

"Well, how stands our case?" said Mr. 
Huff. 

" All as I told you," answered Huckins. 

" Our brother Higgs's condition is desperate 
— is it ?" asked Huff, with a sweet sardonical 
smile. 

" What's that you say of me ?" roared Higgs. 
" Pray what is it, Mr. Huckins ?" 

" I'd rather not," answered the parson, " 1 
have too much regard for your feelings." 

" Out with it, sir, if you please," again cried 
Higgs ; " I must know what matter concerns 
me, that you and Mr. Huff are so secret with. 
Will you be so good as to inform me ?" 

" If you will know, then," answered Huckins, 



PARSON HUCKINS'S FIRST APPEARANCE. 



87 



prefacing his remarks with a long-drawn and [ 
meek expression of countenance, " it is my un- 
pleasant duty to inform you, that it is your in- 
evitable destiny to go to hell !" 

" To go where ?" exclaimed Higgs, in an in- 
cipient rage. 

" Be not agitated, my good sir !" said the 
parson soothingly, " I merely said to hell. Be 
calm — for my sake — be calm. I regret it — I 
sincerely regret it, and wish to alleviate your 
misfortune as much as possible. Is there any- 
thing I can do for you in a secular sense : are 
you in want of meat ? clothing ? coal ? I truly 
commiserate with you, my fellow-mortal !" 

" No more of this, if you please," cried Higgs ; 
"I will look at your certificates." 

" Here, sir, is one — which must satisfy you 
fully," said the parson, and he handed him Mor- 
fit's document, with which Higgs immediately 
busied himself. 

Mrs. Furbelowe took advantage of the pause 
to gain her feet, and advanced within a yard of 
the parson, with a very solemn smile on her 
countenance, and the basket on her left arm ; 
she there stopped short, and began to hold 
forth. "Sir," said she, "the 'Pottawatomy 
Association' highly appreciating your numerous 
Christian virtues — " 

"How is this," broke out Higgs, remorse- 
lessly cutting short the proffered harangue. 
" This affidavit is sworn to by my own shoe- 
maker !" 

At that moment, and before the parson could 
reply to this pertinent query, Morfit himself 
entered with a little grim man with a staff. 

" Ah !" cried the little grim man, the instant 
his eye fell upon the reverend gentleman, " Ah, 
my good old friend ! — how are you, Peter — how 



are you ?" he continued, grasping the parson's 
reluctant hand, and wringing it with a hard 
gripe. 

" Gentlemen," he added, seizing Huckins by 
the collar, and turning to the company, " allow 
me to introduce you to my worthy friend — Peter 
Williams — the notorious incendiary !" 

"Peter Williams !" gasped Huff. " Fire and 
flames !" 

" A house-burner !" said Higgs. " I thought 
as much from the combustible character of his 
sermons !" 

" Take me home !" shouted Mrs. Furbelowe, 
" I'm fainting, I shan't survive this long ! it's 
too much for my constitution !" And she let fall 
the basket, from which the Pottawatomy medal 
rolled upon the floor. Wiggle availed himself 
of the confusion to slip from the room, with a 
most voluminous and expressive grin on his 
queer features. 

" As Higgs, my senior partner, says — " pro- 
ceeded Higgins. 

" Come," said the officer, interrupting him, 
" come, Peter, you must go to prison. You'll 
die yet like an old horse at the rack, with your 
head through a halter." 

" If I do," cried the parson, " I'll be—" He 
struck his hand forcibly upon the desk frame, 
to give emphasis to his asseveration : the shock 
awakened him. The whole scene had vanish- 
ed, and instead of the pit audience, his eyes 
rested upon the up-turned faces of two or three 
humble Christians on the front benches of the 
chapel, gazing upon him with dilating eyes. 
He convulsively grasped his hat, rushed madly 
up the middle aisle, out of the building — and, 
like all heroes of this humbler kind of romance, 
has never been seen or heard of since. 



THE END OF THE MOTLEY BOOK. 



BEHEMOTH 



A LEGEND 



OF 



THE MOUND-BUILDERS. 



BEHEMOTH. 



PREFACE. 

It was the main design of the author in the fol- 
lowing work, to make the gigantic relics which 
are found scattered throughout this continent, sub- 
servient to the purposes of imagination. He has, 
therefore, dared to evoke a Mighty Creature from 
the earth, and striven to endow it with life and 
motion. Coeval with this, the great race that pre- 
ceded the red men as the possessors of our conti- 
nent, have been called into being. With whatever 
success the author may have accomplished this 
portion of his task, the venerable race which strug- 
gled and endured in these fair fields, ere they be- 
came our home and dwelling place, must be allow- 
ed to awaken our feelings and share our generous 
regards. In describing the Mound-builders, no 
effort has been made to paint their costume, their 
modes of life, or their system of government. They 
are presented to the reader almost exclusively un- 
der a single aspect, and under the influence of a 
single emotion. It matters not to us whether they 
dwelt under a monarchical or popular form of pol- 
ity ; whether king or council ruled their realms ; 
nor, in fine, what was their exact outward condi- 
tion. It is enough for us to know, and enough for 
our humanity to inquire, that they existed, toiled, 
felt, and suffered ; that to them fell, in these plea- 
sant regions, their portion of the common heritage 
of our race, and that around those ancient hearth- 
stones, washed to light on the banks of the far- 
western rivers, once gossiped and enjoyed life, a 
nation that has utterly faded away. We are moved 
deeply in looking upon their mortuary remains — 
those disinterred and stately skeletons — for we 
know that they once were men, and moved among 
men with hearts full of human impulses, and heads 
warm with mortal schemes and fancies. Of this, 
history could make us no surer. Over the earth 
where they repose, purple flowers spring up, and 
with the brilliancy of their hues, and the sweetness 
of their breath, give a splendor and fragrance to 
the air. This touches him as deeply, the author 
must confess, and seems to his untraveDed eyes as 
beautiful as anything he can read of Athens, of 
cloudless Italy, or the sunny France. Humanity and 
nature are all with which the heart wishes to deal, 
and we have them here in their naked outlines and 
grandeur. There is enough here for author and 
reader, if they be of strong minds and true hearts. 
A green forest or a sweDing mound is to them as 
glorious as a Grecian temple ; and they may be so 
simple as to be well nigh as much affected by the 
sight of a proud old oak in decay near at home, as 
by the story of a baronial castle tottering to its fall, 
three thousand miles off. 

The author is aware of the difficulty and magni- 
tude of his undertaking. He knows as well as 
any one can know, the obstacles to vanquish and 
remove j and he also knows the obstacles that will 



not be vanquished nor removed. Notwithstanding 
all this, he feels assured, if he has contended in any 
degree successfully with the greatness and majesty 
of the subject, he will have accomplished some 
slight service for the literature of his country, and 
something, he ventures to hope, for his own good 
name. 
New Yohk, January, 1839. 



PART I. 

Upon the summit of a mountain which beetled 
in the remote west over the dwellings and de- 
fences of a race long since vanished, stood, at 
the close of a midsummer's day, a gigantic 
shape whose vastness darkened the whole vale 
beneath. The sunset purpled the mountain- 
top, and crimsoned with its deep, gorgeous tints 
the broad Occident; and as the huge figure 
leaned against it, it seemed like a mighty im- 
age cut from the solid peak itself, and framed 
against the sky. Below, in a thousand groups 
were gathered, in their usual evening worship, 
a strange people, who have left upon hills and 
prairies so many monuments of their power, 
and who yet, by some mighty accident, have 
taken the trumpet out of the hand of Fame, 
and closed for ever, as regards their historical 
and domestic character, the busy lips of tradi- 
tion. Still we can gather vaguely, that the 
Mound-builders accomplished a career in the 
west, corresponding, though less severe and 
imposing, with that which the Greeks and Ro- 
mans accomplished, in what is styled by cour- 
tesy the old world. The hour has been when 
our own west was thronged with empires. 
Over that archipelago of nations the Dead sea 
of time has swept obliviously, and subsiding, 
has left their graves only the greener for a new 
people in this after age to build their homes 
thereon. But at the present time, living thou- 
sands and ten thousands of the ancient people 
were paying homage to their deity ; and as they 
turned their eyes together to bid their customary 
solemn adieu to the departing sun, they beheld 
the huge shape blotting it from sight. The 
first feeling which sprang in their bosoms as 
they looked upon the vision was, that this was 
some monstrous prodigy, exhibited by the pow- 
ers of the air or the powers of darkness, to as- 
tonish and awe them. 



92 



BEHEMOTH. 



But as they gazed, they soon learned that it 
had a fixed and symmetrical form, and pos- 
sessed the faculty of life. 

When they discovered that the huge appari- 
tion was animate indeed, a new terror sprang 
up in their soul. They gathered about their j 
mounds, their places of worship, and on the 
plain, in various and fearful groups. 

In one spot were collected a company of j 
priests and sages, the learned and prophetic of; 
the race, who with straining eyes watched the j 
mighty spectre ; and to gain a clearer concep- 1 
tion of its proportions, scanned its broad and ' 
far-cast shadow, and marked the altitude of the ' 
sun. Each one searched his thoughts for some ' 
knowledge applicable to the sudden and vast 
appearance. 

Not far from these was drawn together a 
group of women, who still retained their devo- 
tional posture and aspect, but yet casting side- 
long and timid glances toward each other's ' 
countenances, as if hoping to discover there an 
interpretation of the spectacle. Children clung ! 
to their garments, and looking up piteously, j 
seemed to ask " if that was not the God whom j 
they were taught to fear and worship I" Each 
moment the awe increased and spread; from 
lip to lip the story ran across the plain and 
through the walled villages, until the spectre 
embraced in its fearful dominion a circuit of 
many leagues. 

Each moment conjecture grew more rife and 
question more anxious and frequent. 

In the opinion of many of the wisest — for 
even from their souls superstitious misgivings 
were not wholly banished — the apparition which 
crowned the mountain was the deity of the na- 
tion, who had chosen to assume this form as the 
most expressive of infinite power and terrific 
majesty. 

Other nobler spirits, and who drew their 
knowledge rather from the intellect than the j 
feelings, believed it was the reappearance of] 
a great brute, which, by its singular strength, 
in an age long past and dimly remembered, had 
wasted the fields of their fathers and made des- 
olate their ancient dwellings. 

A tradition still lingered among them, that of 
that giant race, which had been swept from the 
earth by some fearful catastrophe, one still lived 
and might, from a remote and obscure lair, once 
more come forth, to shake the hills with his 
trampling, and with the shadow of his coming, 
darken the households of nations. 

In the more thoughtful minds of these theor- 
ists, the vivid and traditionary descriptions of 
the mighty herd of brutes which had once tyran- 
nized over the earth, had left an impression 
deep, abiding, and darkly colored. The mem- 
ories of their progenitors had handed them 
down as a Titanic tribe of beings, who in their 
day excited a terror which kindled human fear, 
and with it, the best growth of fear, human in- 
genuity. They remembered that in that distant 
age, as the history ran, a new and majestic race 
of heroes, moulded of nature's noblest clay, had 



sprung into life, to battle with and finally van- 
quish these brute oppressors of their country. 

Day faded fast. Its last streaks died away 
in the west, and yet the solemn shape stood 
there in its vast, unmoving stillness. And still 
the people retained their postures of wonder 
and fear, while in hushed voices they spoke of 
the occupant of the mountain. Gray, cold twi- 
light at length cast its mantle upon the vision, 
and they scattered in anxious parties toward 
their homes. But with them they bore the im- 
age of the huge visitant. They could not shake 
it from them. A general and deep awe had 
fallen on the multitude ; and even when they 
sought their slumbers, that giant shape passed 
before their sealed lids in a thousand forms, as- 
suming as many attitudes of assault and de 
fence ; for from the first, by a strange instinct, 
they had looked upon it as their foe. To watch 
its movements, for it could be yet seen, in the 
clear distinctness of its immense stature, calm, 
majestic, silent; to sound the alarm; if need 
be to meet it face to face, should it descend 
from its pinnacle, the chieftains of the Mound- 
builders thought fit to station armed sentries at 
various corners of the streets and highways of 
their towns and cities, on the walls of their 
fortresses, and, as a more commanding position, 
on the summit of their mounds, and in the 
square stone observatories which crowned a 
portion of them. 

The relics of the fortresses and observatories 
that night manned by the sentinels of that pe- 
culiar people, still stand and moulder on the 
soil of the far west. They are constructed on 
principles of military science now lost or inex- 
plicable. 

But, whatever the code of tactics on which 
they were fashioned, we can not but admire, in 
the midst of our conjectures, their peculiar sym- 



metry, their number, and their duration. Paral- 



lel with the foundations of Rome these walls 
went up, far back in the calendar of time, and 
time-defying, they seem destined to pass down, 
as far from the present into a misty and preg- 
nant future, as the actual history of a populous 
and mighty race. Like the lost decades of the 
writer, some passages are wanting to their com- 
pleteness, but in what stands we may read the 
power, the strength, the decay, and the down- 
fall of our own American ancients. They were 
men of war and those ramparts first built 
against a human enemy were now occupied to 
keep at bay a new and untried foe. From 
time to time, along the line of guardsmen went 
the watchword ; the sentries of different posts 
occasionally whispering to each other that the 
apparition was still visible on the mountain. 
Not a few, overwearied with their fears, slum- 
bered. 

The middle watch of the night had come. 
The air was dark and still. Not a breath nor 
voice broke the universal quiet : when, clear 
and sharp, there fell upon the ears of the sleep- 
ing populace, a sound like the crash of sudden 
thunder. The earth shook as if trodden by 



BEHEMOTH. 



93 



heavy footsteps, and through the air came a 
noise like the rushing of some mighty bulk in 
violence and haste. Ponderous hoofs trampled 
the earth and drew nigh. It was he — the tra- 
ditionary brute — Behemoth — and before his ir- 
resistible force fell whatever strove to gainsay 
his advance. The whole region trembled as 
when a vast body of waters bursts its way and 
rolls over the earth, ocean-like, wave shouting 
to wave, and all crowding onward with thunder- 
ous tumult. In vain was the solid breast- work ; 
the piled wall was in vain ; in vain the armed 
and watchful sentry. Like some stupendous 
engine of war, he bore down on them, render- 
ing human strength a mockery and human de- 
fences worse than useless, for as wall, bastion 
and tower fell, they redoubled death and ruin 
on their builders. With a speed of which no 
common celerity can give us a conception he 
swept through the towns and villages, the till- 
ed fields and pleasure gardens of the Mound- 
builders — desolating and desolate — none daring 
to stand before his feet thus dreadfully advan- 
ced. 

The trepidation of the day grew a hundred- 
fold ; from the dark, dim light which the stars 
forced through drifting and solid clouds, they 
could but guess vaguely at his bulk, yet out of 
their fears and the darkness they wrought an 
awful image of vastness and strength. Night 
banded with the monster, and terror walked in 
their train. 

The morning dawned, and its light fell upon 
the face of an early-wakened and fear-stricken 
people. On every countenance was graven the 
clear and visible impiint of terror; but the ex- 
pression was by no means that of ordinary 
alarm, such as is engendered by siege, or battle, 
or death ; nor did it stamp the countenance 
with the characters of a daily and familiar fear. 

A dread which changed the whole aspect, 
such as distorts the features and takes from 
them their old, household look, was upon all. 
In the consternation and imbecility of the mo- 
ment messengers were speeded forth and hur- 
ried to and fro through the many villages of the 
Mound-builders bearing tidings to which as 
answer, they received — the same tidings in re- 
turn ! The visitation had been universal ; in 
each one of their five thousand villages were 
left like marks of brute ravage and strength ! 

Behemoth had been with them all ; and his 
large footsteps were traced wide over the plain 
until they broke oft' abruptly at its extreme 
bounds, and wheeled heavily into the mount- 
ains. When their dismay had subsided from 
its first flood-tide, they began to compare ob- 
servations and consult with each other. The 
memories of most were bewildered in endeavor- 
ing to recall the occurrences of the past night ; 
but from what with their confused faculties, 
they could grasp, they were well assured that 
the whole circuit of desolation had been accom- 
plished within the passage of a single hour. 
And now the time was come for them to look 
forth and measure that desolation — to what 



side shall they first turn ? Everywhere is some 
monument of that irresistible force. In one 
brief hour he has overthrown what Time, with 
his centuries, could not touch. There at the 
track of his first foot-prints is a crushed wall — 
driven through by some powerful, and to them 
as yet unknown, weapon of strength, which has 
left its dints upon the shattered fragments. 
Massive portions of it have fallen to powder 
beneath his weight. Across the path which he 
seems to have chosen out to stalk in rude tri- 
umph, through the very heart of their dwellings, 
lies a dead guardsman whom his might must have 
first dashed to the earth by some other unconjec- 
tured instrument of power, and then trampled 
upon, for at every pore the blood issues in tor- 
rents. Against a dwelling, pinned to its wall, 
is the corpse of a second sentinel which seems to 
have been hurled with scorn by the brute invader 
into its present abiding-place. On the threshold 
of her own home lies a mother with her child 
closely clinging to her neck, its little lips pressed 
to its parents — both smitten into death by a 
single blow. 

Look forth from this narrow scene and read 
the map of a broader ruin — the traces of a more 
fearful mastery ! Yonder mound, consecrated 
by the entombed dust of a generation of sages 
and heroes is embowelled, and its holy ashes 
laid open to the vulgar air and the strumpet 
wind. And yonder gardens, once the resort of 
blooming beauty and gentle childhood — its walls 
strew the ground and its flowers, broken and 
withered, are sunken by the massy weight which 
has spoiled them, deep into the earth. And 
lo ! that trodden and miry field, shut in by the 
standing fragments of two oblong walls — yes- 
terday, it was a fair greensward where strength 
wrestled kindly with strength and age looked on 
approvingly. In another quarter behold a tall 
tower of stone is cast down before the same in- 
comprehensible might ! The enclosure which 
surrounded and guarded it is battered to the earth, 
and about it is collected at this morning hour not 
a few of the chiefs of the Mound-builders, deeply 
lamenting the overthrow of so scientific and regu- 
lar a muniment. Sad words pass from each to 
each and they look despondingly into each other's 
faces, and find no hope, but rather a triumphant 
despair. From among the group which hung 
thus powerless and complaining over the shat- 
tered battlement boldly stood forth Bokulla, the 
most fearless and energetic chieftain of the na- 
tion — Bokulla — a man of singular and prompt 
courage, greatly earnest and energetic in pur- 
pose : yet calm and self involved. 

In every enterprise keeping himself aloof 
until the resources of all others were exhausted, 
and then, when every eye was turned toward 
him as the last sustainer of hope, springing 
with alacrity to the front, prepared to match 
the emergency with some new and vigorous 
suggestion. Bokulla was a thinker no lata 
than a soldier; not artificially framed by rilling 
his mind with learned apothegms and pithy in- 
stances, but with a philosophy, the growth of a 



94 



BEHEMOTH. 



meditative spirit that brooded over all things 
and created wisdom from most. He possessed, 
nevertheless, a thoroughly martial and ener- 
getic mind, and found in every path of life, an 
accessory to strengthen and adorn that char- 
acter. Unlike, however, the majority of pro- 
fessed militants, he rarely exhibited the gay 
buoyancy which is so generally considered in 
them an essential. On the contrary, even 
in the maddest onset and in the high flush of 
triumph, his brow was saddened, oftentimes 
with a passing cloud of gloom ; the mark which 
distinguishes too often those who are born to 
be the leaders and benefactors of their race. 

The mind of Bokulla partook of another pe- 
culiarity, in common with many men of mas- 
terly genius. Defeated, or foiled in any attempt, 
his heart plunged, awhile, in the profoundest 
and most torturing despair — but only for the 
instant — and then, reassuming its lofty strength, 
an eagle, unchained, or slipped from its dark- 
ened cage, he rose into the clear, broad sun- 
shine of a worthier condition. 

Such was Bokulla ; and, when those grouped 
around him had each offered his several re- 
mark, and they had mutually mourned over the 
present desolation, he stood forth from their 
midst and said, " Men ! the day is spent with 
repining, and the night comes, and with it, per- 
chance, our dread enemy. Let us rebuild the 
wall, and show, at least, that we can oppose 
our old strength to his inroads. He has but the 
instinct of a brute, we have the reason of men. 
Let him not," he cried, " let him not find us, 
for our souls' sake, let him not find us greater 
cravens than yesternight !" 

With these words, and with the consent of 
the chieftains who stood about him, he ordered 
the rebuilding of the rampart, and the erection 
of an inner one to flank it. Before the passages, 
which had been previously left free of egress 
and ingress, he directed the construction of 
short and solid walls, which should suffice to 
arrest access, if made in full front, leaving, how- 
ever, side-passages between the extremities of 
the main and those of the newly-erected ram- 
parts. Under the authoritative and cheering 
voice of Bokulla, the building-tool and the 
trenching-iron ply busily. Parties of labor- 
ers hurry from quarter to quarter of the work, 
and something like a manly and worthy spirit 
seems again to fire their bosoms and lighten 
their toil. While some gather together the bro- 
ken portions of earth, and remould them to their 
purpose, others bring from the distance new 
supplies, and still others quarry and shape the 
stone to crown their summits. Under his quick 
and commanding eye, the tower of observation 
goes up and its defences are restored. 

But, while Bokulla and his aids build up the 
strong wall to guard the living, is there no du- 
ty and service due to the dead ? There is ; and, 
under other guidance, the manly forms which 
were laid in the recent encounter, are stretched 
for their last repose. 



Devoted hands compose their discolored limbs, 
and bathe them with embalming drugs, while 
their kindred, those nearest and dearest in life, 
collect — to accompany them in this, their last 
journey — whatever can consecrate or dignify 
their sepulture. Those who have fallen, fell in 
the defence of the nation, and are, therefore, 
worthy of the nation's honors. Let them be 
buried, then, as becomes heroes of the Mound- 
builders — bearing away with them, into the un- 
known land, tokens of merit and badges of high 
desert. Their bodies are swathed in fine rai- 
ment ; at their right hand are placed the weap- 
ons of war, grasping which they fell ; at their 
sides are arrayed mirrors of glass or metal (ac- 
cording to their rank) in which they were wont 
to look for the reflection of their own martial 
features, when set for the stern service of war. 
At their heads are disposed the helms which 
covered them in the day of battle, and on their 
now pulseless breasts lie polished pieces of cop- 
per, in the form of the cross. 

Can it be that those antique warriors were 
Christian men ? — that, among them, they thus 
cherished trophies of the crucifixion, and up- 
held the ark of that reverend creed ? — or, at 
least, some stray fragments of the holy struc- 
ture, obscurely delivered over to them by pater- 
nal or patriarchal hands ? I know not ; but 
this is the language which their discovered rel- 
ics speak to us of the present generation. 

Slowly, from each dead hero's dwelling, 
winds forth the solemn procession, with its weep- 
ing-troop and its religious mourners. Gather- 
ing at a central spot, they unite into one body, 
and, thus collected, take their way toward the 
funeral-mounds. Attendants send forth, from 
marble instruments, shaped like crescents and 
highly polished, a slow and mournful music. 
Beside the bier of each fallen soldier, walk his 
wife and children, while, at its head, marches 
solemnly the priest, who, in life, was his spir- 
itual father. 

Winding through the villages, over the mead- 
ows, and along the stream-side, they reach the 
bank, right opposite the mounds in which the 
dead are to find their final slumber. Descend- 
ing into the limpid and shallow stream, the bear- 
ers gently dip each corpse beneath the waters, 
thus purifying it, by a natural sort of baptism, 
fiom every earthly grossness, and then they re- 
sume their way — all following, with bared an- 
kles, through the placid rivulet. At length they 
reach the sacred mound. At its side, toward 
the east, the earth is removed, and, turning 
their faces to the sun, while the marble breathes 
forth a higher strain, the bearers of the dead 
enter the hollowed mound. 

As they enter, the throng chant together a 
simple ballad, reciting the virtues and the valor 
of the departed, and, at its close, recommend- 
ing them to the Giver of life and the God of the 
seasons. The bier-bearers place the mortal re- 
mains of the heroes whom they have borne, 
within the cavity, upon the earth, with their 



BEHEMOTH. 



95 



faces upward, their feet pointing to the north- 
east (perhaps the home of their progenitors) and 
their heads toward the more genial southwest. 

Thus were the common-soldiers, among those 
who had fallen, huried; hut one of that number — 
he who had been captain of the guard, and a 
man of note among the people, received sepa- 
rate and more especial rites. 

His remains were borne apart, to a distinct 
mound, and there, when they were laid out with 
the honors of a chief who had lost his life in 
battle, martial music, breathing from the instru- 
ments, and the whole multitude joining in a 
chant, commemorative (like those recited over 
the common soldier) of his valor and character, 
they proceeded to burn his body and gather his 
ashes into their separate tomb. They then 
closed the mouths of all the mounds, and, when 
the priests had offered a prayer for the peace- 
ful repose of their dust, the multitude turned 
toward their homes. 

All was hushed and silent save the gentle 
tread of the homeward-tending people. The 
mourning relatives of the dead had lulled into 
a temporary calm their troublous feelings, and 
wept with composure. The spirit of peace was 
over all. Suddenly a shrill voice was heard to 
cry, " He comes ! he comes V* It proceeded 
from a child, who, unobserved, had climbed to 
the upper window of one of the stone observa- 
tories. The multitude were arrested by the 
voice, and, turning to the quarter from which it 
issued, saw the ringer of the alarmist pointing 
to a body of woods which lay a short distance 
west from the path which they were taking 
to their homes. As at the bidding of a god, 
the whole people, with one accord, swerved 
round and gazed toward the forest, and there 
they beheld — Behemoth. Fixed in an attitude 
of astonishment and dread, they stood gazing 
— and still gazing upon the spectacle — a bound- 
less and motionless gallery of faces. It was 
near the sunset. Overhead, in its level light, 
a grey bald eagle, just flown from its neighbor- 
ing eyry, hung poised in wonder, as if turned 
to stone by the novel sight of so vast a creature. 
In its motionless suspension, it seemed as if 
sculptured from the air, while its wings were 
gilded, like some remains of the old statuaries, 
by the golden touch of the sun. 

Visible above the woods, moving heavily 
through the sea of green leaves, like leviathan 
in the deep, appeared the dark and prodigious 
form of the Mastodon ; an awful ridge rolling 
like a billow, along the tops of the pine and 
cedar which grew beneath him. The bound- 
less bulk moved through the trembling verdure, 
like an island which, in some convulsion of na- 
ture, shifts itself along the surface of the sea. 
The forest shook as he advanced, while its 
scared and barbarous denizens, the prairie 
wolf, the gopher, and the panther, skulked si- 
lently away. 

As yet his whole mighty frame was not visi- 
ble. Even amid the trepidation and fear of the 
Mound-builders a curiosity sprang up to behold 



the sum of his vast proportions : to see at once 
before them and near at hand the actual dimen- 
sions of that shape whose shadowy outlines 
had, when first seen, wrought in them effects 
so boundless and disastrous. 

Occasionally as the Mastodon glided along, a 
green tree-top wavered for a moment in the 
wind, leaned forward into the air — and fell to 
the earth as if pushed from its hold by the 
chance-exerted strength of the great brute. 
Again, they heard a crash, and a giant oak 
which had just now lorded it over its fellows 
was snapped from its stem and cast far forth 
over the tops of the forest. His very breath 
stirred the leaves till they trembled, and every 
step of his march denoted, by some natural ap- 
pearance, the possession of monstrous and fear- 
ful power. 

j After stalking through a large tract of wood- 
land without allowing any greater portion of 
his bulk to become apparent, he wheeled through 
the forest and descending into a wooded valley 
disappeared, each step reverberating along the 
earth with a deep and hollow sound. It was a 
long time ere the Mound-builders resumed their 
old, homeward progress, and when they did it 
was with alarmed and cheerless spirits. The 
awe of the great shadow was upon them. 
Now more than ever they felt the folly of gain- 
saying or attempting to withstand a power 
which shrouded itself in a form so vast and in- 
accessible. 

From that day forth a gloom settled upon the 
minds of the Mound-builders — deep, rayless 
and full of fearful omens ; for though personal 
energy may rescue individuals from that des- 
perate condition, it is a hopeless and a dreadful 
thing when nations become the victims of de- 
spair. All the mighty wheels of life are stop- 
ped ; all the channels through which the soul 
of the people once coursed are now closed, and, 
in most cases, closed for ever. The arteries 
through which the life-blood gushed are 
deadened, and the warm current is arrested as 
if the winter had descended upon it in its very 
spring-tide. The Mound-builders were now 
fallen into that sad estate. Neither the spirit- 
stirring voice of Bokulla, nor the trump of 
war, nor the memory of their fathers' fields or 
their fathers' valor, could awaken them to a 
sense of what was due to their manhood or 
their duty. The Mastodon seemed resolved to 
preserve the spell by an almost perpetual pres- 
ence. Day after day in the same gray twi- 
light did Behemoth cast his shadow from the 
summit of some near elevation ; and midnight 
after midnight, at the same cold and sullen 
hour, did he descend and force his huge bulk 
through the villages of the Mound-builders: 
breaking their walls in pieces, rending their 
dwellings, disclosing their mounds and despoil- 
ing their pleasure gardens from end to end. 
He had become the spectral visitant of the na- 
tion ; — the monstrous and inexorable tyrant 
who, apparently gliding from the land of 
shadows, presented himself eternally to them, 



96 



BEHEMOTH. 



the destroyer of their race. He seemed, in 
these terrible incursions, to be fired with a 
mighty revenge for some tinforgiven injury in- 
flicted on his dead and extinct tribe by the hu- 
man family. In the calm and solemn quiet of 
night, when fretted labor sought repose and 
anxious thought craved slumber, he burst down 
from the mountains like thunder and bade them 
— Awaken ! awaken ! 

The internal and external influence of an 
harassment like this could not be otherwise 
than large and disastrous. First came the dire 
change in the mind itself : when this terrible 
shadow glided among its quiet emotions, its fa- 
miliar habits, and its household and national 
thoughts. All objects that had hitherto occu- 
pied a place in the mind of the people now as- 
sumed a new color and complexion as this 
portent fell upon them, in the same manner as 
everything in nature catches a portion of the 
gloom of twilight when it suddenly approaches. 
No angle of the wide realm of the Mound- 
builders escaped from the darkness of fear, and 
everywhere the fountains of social life became 
stagnant and ceased to issue in healthy currents, 
like streams that are silent and still when light 
has departed from their surface. 

The voice of joy died away into a timid and 
feeble smiling ; proud and stately ambition fell 
humbled to the earth, and love and beauty trem- 
bled and fled before the gloomy shadow of the 
general adversary. Men shunned each other as 
if from a consciousness of their abasement, and 
skulked away from the face of day, unwilling 
that the heavens should look in upon their des- 
olation and shame. 

Some abandoned their homes and took refuge 
in cliffs and inaccessible precipices, preferring 
poverty and exposure to wind and tempest and 
hostile weather, rather than encounter with a 
foe so dreadful and triumphant. The great 
mass, however, lingered in their customary 
dwellings; but so thoroughly was every mo- 
tive to action numbed and paralyzed, they neg- 
lected to repair the roof that had fallen, the 
beam that had decayed, or the foundation that 
had yielded to the summer's rain, and innumer- 
able buildings, throughout the whole realm, 
tumbled into ruin, and many that stood on the 
borders of rivers, undermined by the motion of 
their currents, tottered and fell into the stream, 
while their terror-stricken inmates, in many 
cases, perished without a struggle. 

The ordinary occupations and duties of life 
were performed with feeble hands and vague 
thoughts, or entirely deserted. 

This mighty and puissant nation, whose 
strength was that of a giant, and whose glory 
rivalled the sun, was stricken by terror into a 
feeble and child-like old age. All its propor- 
tions were diminished ; its heart was shrunk, 
and it dragged on a slothful and decrepid exist- 
ence amid the cold and monumental ruins of 
what had once been its beautiful domain, and 
its house of honor and joy. That salient and 
almost motiveless energy which drives a nation 



on through toils, battles, and discomfitures, to 
prosperity and triumph ; that hazardous and all- 
adventurous daring which pushes doubt aside, 
and which, while it questions nothing, strives 
at everything, was utterly departed. 

From the silence and quiet of his studied re- 
tirement, Bokulla beheld the shadow as it slow- 
ly and fearfully crossed the national mind. 
From the first he saw the change which was 
coming over it, and knew that human wisdom 
was too weak to arrest or avert it, unless the 
great first cause could be removed. And yet, 
while others yielded thus submissively to a 
meek despair, he, keeping himself invisible to 
the general eye, tasked his bold and liberal 
mind for some remedy for the evil. In the calm 
and dead quiet of his private chamber he sat, 
from day to day, brooding over plans and enter- 
prises whereby to rescue the nation. 

Bokulla entertained a deep-founded confi- 
dence in the human character. Himself equip- 
ped with an indomitable will, and faculties stout 
and resolute as iron, he was assured that by sim- 
ilar qualities the nation was to be redeemed 
from thraldom. Amid a thousand changes of 
nature, man had endured ; mountains had been 
cleft asunder ; seas had leaped upon continents, 
and marched triumphantly over every barrier 
and obstacle ; great orbs had been extinguished, 
like tapers of an evening, in the skies, yet man 
stood, steadfast amid the shock and the mutation. 
Along the bleak coasts of inhospitable time, he 
had voyaged in a secure and upright vessel ; on 
this ridge of earth he still stood, while the visi- 
ble universe passed through changes of season, 
through increase or diminution of splendors, and 
through worlds created or worlds destroyed. 

Was man, who thus outlasted seas, and stars, 
and mountains, to be crushed at last by mere bru- 
tal enginery and corporal strength ? 

Reflections like these wrought the mind of 
Bokulla to a condition of fearless and manly 
daring, and he brought his whole soul to the 
labor of discovering or contriving the means of 
triumph or resistance. It may well be supposed 
that, tower as his thought might, it strove in 
vain to overtop the stature or master the bulk 
of the Mastodon ; what were fosses, and bas- 
tions, and battlements, to him that moved like 
a mountain against opposition ? No wall could 
shut him out ; seas might interpose in vain to 
cut off his fearful pursuit of a fugitive people. 
Resting or in motion, that terrible and far-reach- 
ing strength would overtake them, and accom- 
plish its purposes of desolation and ruin. 

With this stupendous and inevitable image 
the whole might of Bokulla's soul wrestled for 
a long time. An untiring invention, that kept 
steadily on the wing, started suggestion on sug- 
gestion, but all unequal to the mighty necessity 
of the occasion. He gathered facts on which 
to build the fabric of opposition, huge enough 
to countervail a superhuman force, but they 
tottered and fell to the earth before the ideal 
presence of Behemoth. He surveyed mountains, 
and, in imagination, linked them together, wif 



' 



BEHEMOTH. 



97 



wide arches and empyreal bridges, and com- 
passed the people round about with rock-built 
circumvallations and ramparts of insurmounta- 
ble altitude and strength. But it would have 
required ages to complete the defences, suggest- 
ed by a swift imagination, which would have 
been equal to their object ; and others, which 
great labor might have more readily erected, 
would have been swept away in a single night 
by the barbaric invader. 

When this conclusion forced itself upon him, 
Bokulla felt, for a moment, the pangs of a hope- 
less and overwhelming despair. A midnight 
darkness came over his mind, and it was, for a 
time, as if the sun and the heavens were oblit- 
erated from his view, and as if he were doomed 
to travel, henceforth, a gloomy turnpike, where 
all was sorrow, and wailing, and terror without 
end. But the light gradually broke in upon his 
soul, and his palsied faculties began to awaken 
and cast off the slumber and the delusion. His 
reflections, it is true, had taught him that his 
countrymen could act in defence against their 
vast oppressor with but frail chance of success. 
He was satisfied that a weight and bulk as mon- 
strous as that of Behemoth would burst their 
way, by their mere impetuous motion, through 
any barrier or redoubt they might erect. There 
was another thought, however, worthy of all 
consideration — could not the Mound-builders, 
a naturally adventurous and valiant people, act 
on the offensive ? Abandoning passive and bar- 
barous suffering, was not battle to be waged, 
and waged with hope against the despoiler ? 
This question Bokulla had put anxiously to him- 
self, and he watched, with an eager eye, for 
some favorable phase of the national feeling, 
ere he addressed it to the people. 

From one crisis of fear to another, the Mound- 
builders passed rapidly, and, as the shades 
of night thicken one upon the other, each 
aspect of their condition was gloomier than 
the former. At length, as darkness deepened 
and strengthened itself, light began to dawn 
in the opposite quarter. Hardened by cus- 
tom, and familiar, in a measure, with the ob- 
ject of their dread, they now ventured to lift 
their pale, white countenances, and gaze with 
some steadiness of "vision upon the foe. 

Naturally of a noble character and constitu- 
tion, the Mound-builders needed only that the 
original elements of their temper should be 
stirred by some powerful conviction to excite 
them to action. A new spirit, or rather the 
ghost of the old and exiled one, had returned to 
the nation, and they now saw before them, un- 
less they resumed their manhood and generously 
exerted strength and council, ages of desolation 
and fear for themselves and their children. 
Were they men, and should no hazard be dared, 
no toil or peril endured, to break the massive 
despotism that held them to the earth ? Were 
they the possessors of a land of sublime and 
wonderful aspects, the dwellers amid intermin- 
able woods and lakes of living water, and were 
no glorious nor resolute energies matured by 
G 



these, capable to cope with that which was 
mighty and awful ? 

At this fortunate stage of feeling Bokulla ap- 
peared. He clothed the thoughts of the people 
in an eloquence of his own. He painted the 
portrait of their past condition in life-like and 
startling colors. He told them that from the 
apparent size and solidity of the Mastodon, and 
the uniform analogy of nature, he might endure 
for centuries, yea, even beyond the duration of 
mankind itself, unless his endless desolation 
could be arrested. If they suffered now under 
his irresistible sway, they might suffer for a 
thousand years to come. That vast frame, he 
feared, decay could not touch. And in a stature 
so tremendous must reside an energy and stub- 
bornness of purpose, endurable and unchanging. 

Next, addressing them from the summit of a 
mound, around which many of the people were 
grouped in their old worship (some faint image 
of which they had kept up through all their 
terror) he appealed to them by the sacred and 
inviolate ashes that rested underneath his feet. 
If old warriors and generous champions, never 
dishonored, could awaken from the slumbers of 
death, and breathe again the pure air of that 
glorious clime, what voice of denunciation or 
anger would they utter ! 

" Are these men, that creep along the earth 
like the pale shadows of autumn, Mound- build- 
ers and children of our loins ? What hath 
affrighted them ? Look to the mountains, and 
lo ! an inferior creature, one of the servants 
and hirelings of man, hath the mastery. Arouse ! 
arouse our sons ! Place in our old, death- with- 
ered hands the swords we once wielded — crown 
us with our familiar helms, and we will wage 
the battle for you. Victory to the builders of 
the mounds ! victory to the lords and masters 
of the earth!" 

The national pulse beat true again, and Bo- 
kulla hastened from village to village, quicken- 
ing and firing it. Everywhere the hour of ren- 
ovation seemed to have come. Everywhere 
ascending their high places, he appealed to 
them by memories to which they could not but 
hearken. Everywhere an immense populace 
gathered about him and listened to his words, 
as if they were the inspired language of hope. 
And when their souls were fired, as it were, 
under the fervent heat of his eloquence, he 
skilfully moulded them to his own plan and 
purpose. He recounted to them the mode, the 
time and course he thought fit for them to adopt 
in seeking battle with Behemoth. 

After consultation with their chieftains, the 
levy expected and demanded of each Avas soon 
settled. 

They were to venture forth with an army 
(easily collected in that populous nation) of one 
hundred thousand strong. Bokulla was to be 
the leader-in-chief. Approved men were to be 
his counsel and aids. The day of setting forth 
on the great campaign was lixed ; not far distant. 
In the meantime, all diligence and labor were 
to be employed in disciplining, equipping, and 



98 



BEHEMOTH. 



inspiriting the troops : in burnishing and fra- 
ming the necessary armor, and in constructing 
certain new engines of war, which Bokulla had 
invented, and which might be of use in the en- 
counter with the terrible foe. 

Every village now presented a picture of 
busy preparation and warlike bustle. The 
forges, whose fires had smouldered in long dis- 
use, were again rekindled, and their anvils rang 
with the noise of a thousand hammers rivalling 
each other in the skill with which they moulded 
the metals into heroic shapes. While one 
wrought out with ready dexterity the breast- 
plate, with its large, circular bosses of silver, 
another, with equal, but less costly felicity, 
framed the brazen hatchet, and the steel arrow- 
head. In every workshop there were employed 
artisans in sufficient number to not only begin 
with the rude ore and shape it into form, but 
also to carry it through every stage of labor — 
tipping it with silver — burnishing — ornament- 
ing—completing them, — affixing leathern han- 
dles to the bosses by which to grasp and hold 
the shield, and arranging them in due order for 
inspection by the appointed officers. 

At another and higher class of laboratories 
they were employed in framing and fashioning 
weapons for chieftains and warriors of note ; 
swords of tempered steel and scabbards of silver, 
capped with points of other and less penetrable 
material : and helmets of copper and shields, 
with ornamental and heraldic devices. Some 
busied themselves in furnishing large shields of 
brass, which they polished with care until they 
glittered again — while still farther on, they 
wrought out large bows of steel, from which to 
speed the barbed arrows prepared by their fel- 
low-workmen. Farther up, near the mountain- 
side, there lay a range of shops, in which a 
thousand operatives constructed military wagons 
and other vehicles for the expedition ; for they 
knew not how far it might extend, nor through 
what variety of hill and dale. 

To the right of these were gathered artisans 
under the immediate superintendence of the 
commander-in-chief, who labored at certain vast 
and new engines of battle, more especially con- 
trived for conflict with the vast brute. These 
were large and ponderous wooden structures, 
something like the towers known in Roman 
warfare, but, as the strength and stature of 
the foe required, of far greater height and stiff- 
ness. 

They were to be planted on heavy wheels 
and of great circumference — placed far apart, 
so as to furnish for the whole edifice a broad 
and immoveable base. On the outer side, they 
were armed with every sort of sharp-edged wea- 
pon, cutlass, falchion, and spearhead, so as to 
be, if possible, unassailable by Behemoth. In- 
ternally, they were furnished with great store 
of vast bows and poisoned shafts, with which, if 
such thing might be, to pierce him in some vul- 
nerable point, or at least to gall him sorely and 
drive him at a distance. Besides these, there 
were suspended in copious abundance, divers 



ingenious implements, each contrived for some 
emergency of battle, to strike, to ward, to 
wound, and to destroy. 

Others were building, taller and stronger, at 
the summits of which were suspended great 
masses of metal and ponderous hammers, tons 
in weight, with which to wage a dreadful bat- 
tery against the mighty foe. By some internal 
machinery, it was so contrived, that these solid 
weights of metal could be swung to and fro with 
fearful swiftness and violence, by the application 
of a small and apparently inadequate power. 
Another structure, like these, was prepared, 
from which to cast, by means of capacious in- 
struments, large quantities of molten metals, 
kept in fusion by mighty furnaces, to be hurled 
upon the enemy from afar, and to descend upon 
him in sulphurous and deadly showers, like 
those which fell on Sodom and Gomorrah of 
old. 

Day and night, night even to its middle 
watches, were devoted to the construction and 
fabrication of engines and implements like 
these ; for their minds were now so anchored 
on this great enterprise, that all other ties were 
cast loose, and in this alone they embarked 
every thought and purpose. The hours hitherto 
given to repose and sleep, were now made vas- 
sals to the new adventure. 

It was a magnificent spectacle to see a whole 
nation thus gathered under the dark wing of 
the midnight, working out battle for their dread 
adversary. Athwart the solid darkness which 
pressed upon their dwellings, the gleams of 
swarthy labor shot long and frequent. Far 
through the hills echoed the clangor of armorers, 
and the sharp sounds of multitudinous toil, la- 
boring, each in its kind, toward the redemption 
of a people. 

Grouped thus about their forges, and hurry- 
ing from one task to another with rapid and 
quiet tread, they might have seemed to the eye 
of imagination, looking down from the neigh- 
boring heights, to be employed in infernal la- 
bor, and vexing the noon of night with unearthly 
and Satanic cares. 

But over the wide scene there rested a bles- 
sing ; for Heaven always shines upon the op- 
pressed who nobly yearn and vigorously strive 
to break their chains. The long and bright 
hours of day, too, were crowded with their 
peculiar duties. The gardens and the enclosed 
plains, again restored to their old symmetry 
and beauty, were now filled with a soldiery 
which, under the eye of dexterous leaders, 
were drilled, deployed, marshalled, and schooled 
into new manoeuvres, before this unknown 
irt the wars of the Mound-builders, and adapt- 
ed to the character of their unwonted an- 
tagonist. They were taught to wheel with 
novel evolutions, to retreat in less orderly but 
more evasive movements and marches than of 
old, and to attack with a wariness and caution 
hitherto unpractised in their encounters with 
mortal enemies. Over all the eye of Bokulla 
glanced, giving system to the orders of the 



BEHEMOTH. 



M 



chieftains, and confidence to the obedience of 
their legions. Apparently performing duty no- 
where, he fulfilled it everywhere, with a calm 
and masterly skill, which, while it was unob- 
served by the populace, was an object of ad- 
miration to another order of men, who were 
made the immediate channels of his influence, 
and who were therefore brought more directly 
under the spell. 

" Upon my soul," cried one of two officers, 
who stood near the trunk of a withered cedar, 
which overshadowed a wide and deep sunken 
well, looking upon one of these novel parades, 
" upon my soul, Bokulla hath the power and 
the knowledge of a God. Out of these men, 
but yesterday dumb and torpid with fear, he 
has struck the spiiit of life, and that with the 
same ease as my sword-blade strikes from this 
dull stone at my foot, sparks of fire." 

"Who can withstand the giant machines 
which tower yonder, like mountains, above our 
dwellings ?" cried his companion. " The Spirit 
of Evil himself, if imbodied in the frame of the 
Brute, must fall before those whirlwind ham- 
mers of brass and tempests of molten copper !" 

While he spake, one of the vast oaken struc- 
tures had been wheeled out, and his ponderous 
enginery set in motion, and brought to bear 
upon a crag that projected from the mountain 
near which it rested. To and fro they swung 
with fearful force and velocity, at each blow 
shattering vast masses from the rock, and bring- 
ing them headlong down the mountain. At the 
same time, not far distant, tons of crude ore 
were cast into the furnaces, affixed to the other 
towers, and hurled forth upon the prairie in 
clouds of fire, which, as they fell upon the 
earth, scathed and withered everything before 
them. 

Although the multitude entertained hearts of 
favor and hope toward the project of meeting 
Behemoth in battle, there were a few who 
doubted its wisdom and foreboded a gloomy re- 
sult. 

" The dinging of those anvils," said an aged 
man who sat at the sunset in the front of his 
dwelling, to his spouse (no less stricken in 
years), who leaned out at the window, " the 
dinging of yon anvils is to my ears a mere 
death-dirge. Wherefore are the youth of our 
land to be led forth on this vain pilgrimage ? 
They are fore-doomed by the hooting of the 
owl, which has been ceaseless in our woods 
since first it was planned. The dismal bat and 
the brown vulture flap their wings over our 
bright day-marshallings in expectancy of a ban- 
quet." 

" And as for the chieftain, Bokulla," contin- 
ued his wife, prolonging the dolorous strain of 
conversation, " his defeat, if not death, is al- 
ready doomed in heaven. The star which fell 
but yesternight luridly athwart his dwelling, 
foretold that sequel too well. And his spouse, 
stumbled she not essaying but this morning to 
cross its threshold and greet the home-return 
of Bokulla from the distant villages ?" 



" This army, five score thousand in num- 
bers," reiterated the old man, " will be but as 
the snow in the whirlwind before the breath of 
Behemoth. They have forgotten, senseless 
men ! the story of our fathers. They recollect 
not how in ancient days the fellow of this vast 
Brute (perchance this living one himself) was 
met by our hunters in the mountain gorge : 
that his roar was like thunder near at hand, 
and his tread like the invasion of waters ! that 
they shrunk before him into the hollows of the 
rocks as the white cloud scatters before the 
sun !" 

" I pray Heaven the wife of Bokulla be not 
widowed," echoed his spouse. " The chieftain 
is a bold man, and submits but poorly to the 
lording of any, be it man or brute." 

" I fear this spirit pricks him on too far in 
this adventure ; I have warned him secretly," 
concluded the old mound-builder, in a deep and 
solemn tone of voice ; " I have warned him, but 
he scorns my warning. He will not be stayed 
in his purpose. I will warn him yet once more, 
for he dreams not that he goes out to war with 
one who is a giant in instinct as well as in 
strength !" 

The eventful morning of going forth against 
the Mastodon came : it was a morning bright 
with beautiful auspices. The sky overhead 
glittered with its fresh and airy splendors : no 
cloud dimmed the world of indescribable blue 
which hung calm and motionless like heaven 
itself on high. Occasionally against its clear 
canvass a passing troop of wild-fowl painted 
their forms, and vanished ; or, a tree-top here 
and there stood out, pencilled upon it, with its 
branches and foliage all distinct. The sun 
rode just over the horizon, and through the in- 
numerable villages of the Mound-builders the 
martial trumpet sounded the spirit-stirring ala- 
rum. At the call, one hundred thousand right- 
good men of battle seized their arms and march- 
ed through the territory of their brethren in 
solid array. 

At the head of the van, drawn in a two- 
wheeled chariot of wood, studded with iron and 
ornamented with an eagle at each of its four 
points, front and rear, and drawn by a single 
powerful and jet-black bison, came Bokulla 
himself. He stood erect in the vehicle, while 
his burnished armor and towering helm flung 
their splendor far and wide. In his hand he 
held no rein, but guided the noble beast by his 
mere intonations of voice. 

Behind Bokulla followed a company of men- 
at-arms, each bearing along and stalwart club, 
armed, at its heavier extremity, with a four- 
edged sword or falchion, to the point of which 
was affixed a spear-like weapon, still' and keen. 
Of these there were one hundred each cased in 
a mail of elk-skin, which, while it was flexible 
and yielded to every gesture of the body, was 
yet a sufficient defence against any ordinary as- 
sault. These were expected, beside guarding 
and sustaining Bokulla, to close with Behemoth. 
and, taking advantage of the unwieldy motions 



100 



BEHEMOTH. 



of his frame, to wound his legs, or otherwise 
annoy and disable him. Behind these followed 
an equal phalanx of spearmen, whose allotted 
duty it was, with a longer weapon, to gird the 
brute at a distance, and draw his attention from 
any quarter to which it might appear directed 
with too much vigor and chance of danger. In the 
rear of the company of spearmen marched a 
strong body of common soldiers, bearing the 
customary Mound-builders' instruments of war, 
namely, vast steel bows, six feet or more in 
length, and quivers filled with corresponding 
shafts, tipped with poisons, and on their left 
arms bearing the usual shield of copper, with 
bosses of silver. In the rear of these heavily 
rolled on two of those newly-invented machines, 
which rose like pyramids above the array. 
These were drawn by scores of yoked bisons, 
and driven forward by private soldiers, who 
walked at their sides. The earth shook under 
their lumbering weight. Their bowels were 
filled with captains and privates, who had 
charge, each in his station, of their implements 
of death. Following these, in order, marched 
a numerous squadron, sustaining, over their 
sinewy shoulders, heavy axes of steel with edges 
sharp as death, and handles of immoveable oak. 
Drawn by a thousand beasts of burden, behind 
these, came innumerable provision and baggage 
wagons, provided for the emergency of a pro- 
tracted search for the enemy, and a long delay in 
vanquishing and destroying him. These were 
accompanied with troops and officers. Behind 
these walked countless varieties of battle ; sol- 
diers, the very conception of whose armor and 
weapons is lost in the oblivious and moulder- 
ing past. Rearmost came six other towers, bear- 
ing their immense hammers and fiery furnaces, 
with ten thousand troops to guard, to guide 
them ; to select even roads for their progress, 
and, lastly, to wield their vast forces in the hour 
of conflict. 

Over the whole floated a hundred bright and 
emblematic pennons, while the sonorous metal 
kept time to their waving folds as the morning 
wind dallied them to and fro. It was a glorious 
thing to see ten times ten thousand, thus equip- 
ped and embattled, going forth, on that gay 
morning, to the war. 

Wherever their course lay, it was thronged 
with the multitude pushing to gain a sight of 
Bokulla and his compeers, the solid soldiery and 
the stupendous structures. Every window was 
filled, every elevation seized on, every house- 
top covered by spectators straining their vision 
to gather in every appointment and device, ban- 
ner and sword, bison, chieftain, and all. Ah ! 
well might their eyes ache to look upon that 
numerous chivalry ! Well might they hang with 
lingering gaze upon the fair cheeks of that 
youthful array ! Well might their hearts keep 
time with the onward steps of that glorious 
host ! Happy is it for mortals that they can enjoy 
the pageant of the present, and have no power 
to prefigure in it the funeral-procession and the 



mournfnl company into which the future may 
change it ! 

As the foot of the last soldier left the territo- 
ry of the Mound-builders, the drums and trum- 
pets sounded a farewell, and the army, taking 
the right bank of a rapid stream which ran due 
west, pursued its march. The ground over 
which their course lay, was a smooth and pleas- 
ant green-swai'd, the verdure of which was still 
wet with the dews of the night. Occasionally 
it rose into a gentle elevation, which, for the 
first few miles, brought the advancing army 
once again in sight of the expectant gazers, 
who still kept their posts upon housetop, tower, 
and mound. At length, from one of these emi- 
nences, they descended into a valley which bore 
them altogether from the view of the most favo- 
rably-stationed looker-out ; and yet, even when 
their banners and tall structures had passed 
wholly from the sight, gushes of music, fainter 
and fainter at each note, reached their ears, 
and reverberated from the neighboring cliffs 
and hill-sides. 

Onward they passed, through the long vale 
which stretched before them, choosing out the 
clearest paths, and still keeping their march 
toward the Occident. In selecting this route they 
were guided by large tracks which appeared 
at remote strides in the earth, and by frequent 
signs of devastation — fallen trees and crushed 
underwood. 

Once they came to a river of great width, 
on the near margin of which, at the water's 
edge, appeared two large footprints, while on 
the opposite bank were discovered indentations 
equally vast but impressed deeper in the soil, 
as if the monstrous beast had reared on his 
hindermost feet, and, with supernatural strength 
and agility, thrown himself across the inter- 
vening breadth of waters. As there were no 
bridges near at hand, they were forced to com- 
pass the river by a circuitous route, to regain 
the tracks which had been espied on the other 
bank. 

After attaining the utter extremity of the 
vale through which the stream poured its 
tide, they pursued their chosen way into a 
thick wood, the path of the Mastodon through 
which seemed to have been created by sweep- 
ing before him, with a flexible power, what- 
ever obstructed his progress. On every side of 
the huge gap into which the army now entered, 
lay prostrate trees of greatest magnitude — oak, 
pine, and sycamore. Some, apparently, had 
been cast on high, and, descending into the 
neighboring forest, left their roots naked in the 
air, unnaturally inverted and exposed. And yet, 
save in the immediate path of the desolator, 
nature smiled, unalarmed and innocent in its 
primeval and virgin beauty. Here and there 
shone out, in the forest, bright green patches, 
rising often into gentle slopes, or softening 
away into vales as gentle. Frequently the up- 
land was crowned with groups of small trees, 
and the vales were tesselated with sweet wild- 



BEHEMOTH. 



101 



cowers. Then they crossed babbling brooks 
and rivulets, which ran across their march with 
a melodious murmur, eloquent with reproaches 
on the warlike task they were at present pur- 
suing. Again, a large stream, which had gath- 
ered volume from the neighboring mountains, 
came rushing down the declivities, and seemed 
to shout them on to battle. 

At times, in the course of this variegated 
march, they fell upon open spaces where, for a 
small circuit, no tree was to be seen; rich mead- 
ows, the chosen pastures of the wild beings of 
the prairies, pranked with red and white clo- 
ver, and fragrant as the rose, in their unmown 
freshness. 

Sometimes they passed through sudden and 
narrow defiles, overhung by frowning cliffs, and 
clothed with a dank verdure which seemed to 
be the growth of a century. One gorge, in par- 
ticular, of this kind, they encountered, whose 
beetling rocks in their dark and regular gran- 
deur, looked as if they might have been wrought 
out by the hands of the old Cyclops or Pelas- 
gians strange. They seemed to be the solemn 
halls of a great race which had its seat of em- 
pire there (beyond even the age of the Mound- 
builders), and chambered in its tabernacles of 
everlasting stone. But Nature alone built these 
halls for herself, and through them, toward the 
west, she walks at the twilight and morning 
hour in pomp and majesty. I see her, her skirts 
purpled with evening, and flowing forth in the 
fresh breezes of that untainted clime, now 
pacing those mighty avenues, and recalling, in 
their awful stillness, the nations which slumber 
at her feet. Her face brightens like a sun, as 
she meditates over the empires which have 
faded from earth into the dust beneath her; 
she thinks and kindles in knowing and remem- 
bering that, while man is mortal and perisheth, 
she is eternal and thrones with God. 

The glittering and long-extended host of the 
Mound-builders marched on through this cliff- 
walled passage, and passed next from all glimpse 
of the sun, into dense and almost impervious 
woods ; impervious but for the way hewn out 
by the mighty pioneer, in whose tracks they 
continued to tread. Gloom, with its midnight 
wings, sat on high and brooded over the bound- 
less thicket. 

The very leaves seemed dipped in a deeper 
hue of green, and the grass was thick and mat- 
ted underneath, as if, in that desolate region, it 
clung closer to the earth. Above, stood in their 
ancient stillness, apparently unvoiced for ages, 
the tall, sombre trees, while about their trunks 
venerable ivies and mosses clung desperately, 
and mounted far up toward their topmost branch- 
es. Athwart the solid darkness no wing, save 
that of a melancholy owl or bat, clove and fur- 
nished to the tenebrous realm the sign of life 
or motion. On the earth no living thing was 
to be seen, unless, amid the dank grass, an oc- 
casional toad or serpent, sitting or coiled on the 
cold stone. And yet, though life seemed ex- 
7 



tinct, or exhibited itself only in reptile and 
hateful forms, the Mound-builders, as they 
marched on through the gloomy quiet, in pur- 
suit of their mighty prey, saw, in the dimly dis- 
covered foot-marks which they still followed, a 
token of vast and inexplicable power which 
deepened the darkness about them, and infused 
a portion of its weird influence into their souls : 
and yet, with purpose unshaken, they advanced. 
Again the blessed sunshine greeted them, and 
the low mist rolled heavily from their minds — 
and again their purpose stood out to their in- 
ward eye, clear and determinate. 

Emerging from the awful woods they came 
to a broad prairie, across which the large foot- 
steps were deeply visible. On every side, as 
far as the eye could reach, the ample plain was 
desert and unoccupied. The innumerable herds 
of bison which had once been its tenantry, had 
now, before the terror of Behemoth, fled away; 
and the wild wolf, which once lurked amid the 
rank grass, skulked from a power which seem- 
ed to overshadow the earth. Still there was a 
province of animated nature into which the 
alarm scarcely ascended : for on high, as in the 
quiet and fearless hours of earlier times, the 
brown vulture and the bald eagle flew, silently 
sailing on, or sending tlirough the air their 
shrill notes of ecstacy and rapture. The bound- 
lessness of those mighty meadows was in itself 
calculated to strike an awe through the bosom 
of the advancing army ; before it they lay, a 
vast table, on which, as on the tables of stone, 
the fingers of an Omnipotent had written ma- 
jesty, power, and eternity. Contemplations 
like these were sufficient in themselves to fill 
the mind of the armed host with feelings of awe 
and humility; but when, over the immense 
prairie, they saw evidences that something had 
passed which for the moment rivalled Deity; 
more palpable in its manifestations, nearer in 
its visible strength, and less merciful in its 
might ; when the tracks about them and the 
desert solitude which Behemoth had created, 
became thus clearly apparent, they shrunk with- 
in themselves and doubted the wisdom of their 
present enterprise. 

This feeling however reigned but for a mo- 
ment. More manly and martial thoughts soon 
took their place, and they pressed on in the 
path pointed out with alacrity and courage. 
The verge of the plain, which they had now 
reached, bordered on a long and high ridge of 
mountains, which stretched from the margin 
of the prairie far west. Upon these summits 
they now advanced. Arrayed in broad and 
solid columns the army moved on over Hie 
mighty causeway, their trumpets filling the air 
with novel music; while the echo of thei*- 
martial steps, sounding through the wilder****, 
affrighted Silence from his ancient throne. 
Against the clear sky their bright banners 
Stinted, and high up into the heaven aspired 
the warlike tower flashing death faun every 
point. The gleam of ten thousand swords 



102 



BEHEMOTH. 



streamed from those broad heights far into the 
depths of air — above, around, below — lighting 
the solitude like new-risen morning-stars. 

The pride of war now truly kindled their 
breasts — fear skulked aside from their heroic 
way, and Death, could he have come forth a 
personal being, on those clear summits, as their 
pulses freshened in treading them, would have 
been no phantom. 

Through the ranks a soldierly joy prevailed, 
and with the rousing drum their spirits beat 
high. 

They had reached the extreme limit of the 
mountain ridge, and were preparing to descend 
into the plain broadening at its foot, when, 
afar off, they espied, slowly heaving itself to 
and fro in the ocean, which sparkled in the 
mid-day sun beyond the plain, a vast body 
which soon shaped itself to their vision into 
the form of Behemoth. 

The army halted and stood gazing. The 
giant beast seemed to be sporting with the 
ocean. For a moment he plunged into it, and 
swimming out a league with his head and lithe 
proboscis reared above the waters, spouted 
forth a sea of clear, blue fluid toward the sky, 
ascending to the very cloud, which, returning, 
brightened into innumerable rainbows, large 
and small, and spanned the ocean. Again he 
cast his huge bulk along the main, and lay, 
island-like, floating in the soft middle sun, 
basking in its ray, and presenting, in the gran- 
deur and vastness of his repose, a monumental 
image of Eternal Quiet. Bronze nor marble 
have ever been wrought into sculpture as grand 
and sublime as the motionless shape of that 
mighty Brute resting on the sea. 

Even at the remote distance from which they 
viewed him they could catch at times through 
the ocean-spray, the sparkle of his small and 
burning eye. Once, it seemed for a moment 
steadily fixed upon their host as it stood out 
conspicuously on the height, and, abandoning his 
gambols, Behemoth urged his bulky frame toward 
the land. Breasting the mighty surges which 
his own motion created, he sought the shore, 
and as he came up majestically from the water, 
a chasm ensued as if the Pacific shrunk from 
its limits. With a gurgling tumult the sub- 
siding waves rushed into the broad hollow, and 
continued to eddy about its vortex. 

Meantime Behemoth stood upon the earth, 
and rearing on his hindmost feet his foremost 
were lifted high in the air, and with a roar 
loud and fearful (like the gathering of an 
earthquake with its powers of desolation in the 
bowels of the earth) he brought them to the 
plain with a weight and energy which, made it 
tremble to its utmost verge. He moved on ; 
making straight toward the army of the Mound- 
builders. To the eyes of the astonished host, 
as he shouted with his fearful voice, he seemed 
like a dread thunder-cloud which gathers tone 
and volume as it rolls on assaulting with its 
hollow peals the very walls of heaven. Bokul- 



la was undismayed and calm. He saw that the 
hour for action had arrived, and marshalling 
his troops in proper order, he led them down a 
winding and gentle slope which descended to 
the plain. A short time sufficed and they 
reached the level ground. Disposing them- 
selves in the preconcerted order, they awaited 
the on-coming of Behemoth. The towers were 
planted firm on the earth ; the pioneers put 
forth and the instrumental sounds began. As 
an additional thought a battalion of troops was 
placed on a level ledge of rocks, on the side of 
the mountain, and in advance of the main army, 
to gall him as he passed. 

On his part there was no delay : with strides, 
like those of gods, he stalked forward. And 
still he seemed, to the Mound-builders, to grow 
with his advance. His bulk dilated, till it came 
between them and heaven, and filled the whole 
circuit of the sky. The firmament seemed to 
rest upon his wide shoulders as a mantle. As 
he neared upon their view, they saw more of 
his structure and properties. His face was 
like a vast countenance cut in stone, hewn 
from the hard granite of the mountain-side, 
with features large as those of the Egyptian 
sphinx. Before him he bore — terrible instru- 
ment of power ! a mighty and lithe trunk, 
which, with swift skill, he coiled and darted 
through the air, like a monstrous serpent, ar- 
teried with poison and death. Guarding the 
trunk were two far extending tusks, which 
curved and flashed in the sun like scimitars. 
Over his huger proportions fear cast its shadow, 
and they saw them as through a cloud darkly. 
He moved forward, nevertheless, a vast machine 
of war, containing in himself all the muniments 
and defences of a well-appointed host. To the 
cool and courageous sagacity of the leader he 
seemed to join the strength and force of an em- 
battled soldiery : to sharp and ready weapons 
of offence he added the defence of a huge and 
impenetrable frame. Through his small and 
flaming orbs, his soul shot forth in flashes dark 
and desperate. His neck was ridged with a 
short and stiff mane, which lent an additional 
terror to his bulk. 

On he came. He neared the host of the 
Mound-builders. His fearful trunk was uplift- 
ed, and his tusks glanced in the broad beam of 
day over the heads of the army. Not a sword 
left its scabbard. Not an arrow was pointed. 
The brazen hammers and vessels of molten cop- 
per, which had alone been raised, fell back to 
their places, powerless and ineffective. The 
palsy of fear was upon the whole host. The 
near and unexpected vastness of Behemoth 
awed their souls. Bokulla alone retained his 
self-possession, and shouted to the affrighted 
squadrons : " Onward ! Mound-builders — cheer 
up, and onward ! the battle may yet be with 
us !" It was in vain. The vast proboscis de- 
scended, and crushed with its descent a whole 
phalanx. A second sweep, and the mighty 
wooden towers, with their hammers of brass, 



BEHEMOTH. 



103 



their molten copper, and their indwelling de- 
fenders, were hurled on high, and, rushing to 
the earth, strewed the plain with their wreck. 

Ten thousand perished under his feet as he 
trampled onward. Ten thousand fell stricken 
to the earth by the mere icy bolt of fear. The 
legion, stationed on the level ledge, were swept 
from their post, as the whirlwind sweeps the 
dust from the autumn leaf. Twice ten thou- 
sand and more fled up the mountain ; across 
the prairies ; and some, in their extreme of 
trepidation, sought shelter in the sea. With 
infinite ruin the main host lay scattered upon 
the prairie, shield, sword, bow, wagon, wagon- 
er, spearsman, and pioneer. Over the plain, 
maddened by terror, the bisons, with their vehi- 
cles, following in clattering haste, galloped, 
they knew not whither. Of a body of about 
fifteen thousand men, Bokulla, collected as 
ever, took command, and marshalling them 
through a narrow defile, led them up the moun- 
tain, from which the whole army had a few 
hours before descended in pomp and glory. 
Guiding them along the ridge by new and well- j 
chosen paths, he hurried them forward. In the 
meantime Behemoth had accomplished his work 
upon the squadrons which were left. When ! 
the task of death and ruin was completed, he 
stood in the middle of the wreck, and, gazing 
about, seemed to seek for some portion of the 
host on whom desolation was yet to be wrought. 
With sagacious instinct he soon discovered the 
path which the missing legions had taken. In- 
stantly abandoning the plain, he pressed tow- 
ard the gap through which the retreating 
troops had fled. 

Rushing through the defile, he was soon 
standing on the steps of Bokulla and his flying 
troops. Through each narrow pass of rocks 
the chieftain skilfully guided them, taking ad- 
vantage of every object that might be an ob- 
stacle to the monstrous frame of their pursuer. 
Sometimes they mounted a sudden ascent, some- 
times hastened through a narrow vale, or 
around a clump of mighty sycamores and cotton- 
woods. Nevertheless Behemoth pressed on. 
Behind them, terrible as the voice of death, 
they heard his resounding roar, and turned 
pale with affright. They had reached the 
crown of a hill, and were compassing a tall 
rock, which stood in their way, to descend, 
when they heard heavy, trampling steps behind 
them, and looking back, they beheld the pon- 
derous bulk of the Mastodon urging rapidly up 
the ascent. Trepidation fastened on the ranks. 
Their knees smote together, and many, in the 
weakness of sudden fear, fell quaking to the 
earth. Some, in their alarms, cast themselves 
headlong from the height ; some escaped into 
the neighboring woods, and two or three, bereft 
of sense by terror, fled into the very jaws of 
the huge beast himself. A small band only 
kept on their way with Bokulla. 

Surging up the steep, and down the opposite 
descent, Behemoth pushed forward, trampling 
to the earth those who stood rooted in his path- 



statues of despair — and was soon at the rear of 
the small flying troop. 

He was at the very heels of the pale fugi- 
tives, and Bokulla, placing a trumpet at his lips, 
blew a long, loud, and what, in the hour of bat- 
tle and under other auspices, would have been 
an inspiriting blast, and endeavored to arouse in 
them sufficient spirit and strength to bear them 
to the shelter of a gigantic crag which stood in 
their path. Past this the velocity and impetus 
of the brute would inevitably force him, and 
they might rest for a moment, while he rushed 
down and reascended (if reascend he should) 
the declivity. The attempt was successless ; 
the trumpet-blast, vainly blown, was borne fai 
away into the forest, and, echoing from cliff to 
cliff*, seemed only to vex the idle air. 

From Bokulla, one by one, his followers fell 
off and perished by Behemoth, or crept into the 
grass and underwood to die a more lingering 
death. At length the chieftain was alone be- 
fore his mighty pursuer ; and yet he bated not 
a jot of heart or hope, but still bore up and 
steered right onward. With the emergency his 
courage, resolution, and forethought, arose. 

He kept his way steadily, and the bis/n which 
drew him nobly seconded his purpose, and ex- 
hibited, as if inspired by the greatness of the 
occasion, the power of reason in comprehend- 
ing, and a giant's strength in carrying out, the 
most expedient means for the rescue of his mas- 
ter. He seemed to apprehend every direction 
ef Bokulla's at a thought. " To the right, be- 
tween yon stout oaks ! to the left — onward — 
Bokulla is at your mercy !" shouted the rider, 
and they swept along like the prophet and his 
chariot of fire. The night had gradually come 
on. Palpable twilight now overspread the 
scene, and, in a moment, the moon glided to 
her station in the zenith. 

The woods through which Bokulla passed 
were now filled with shadows, which, crossing 
and blending with each other, would have con- 
fused mere human skill in selecting a path, but 
the bison dexterously steered on. With cum- 
brous but swift steps Behemoth still pursued, 
over hills, vales, mountains. 

At length Bokulla reached that very summit 
where first the gigantic phantom had appeared, 
and where the impress of his steps was yet 
clearly left. He had just commenced his de- 
scent toward the villages of the mound-build- 
ers (thousands of whom looked toward his char- 
iot as he sounded another call) and Behemoth 
stood behind him. The mighty brute, from some 
unconjecturable motive, paused. He saw the 
chariot of Bokulla rapidly verging toward 
its home. He abandoned the pursuit, but yet 
yielded not his purpose of destroying the last 
of the army of the Mound-builders ; for, loosen- 
ing from its base a massy rock, which hung, 
threatening, over the village, he lifted it with 
his tusks, and, pushing it forward, urged il 

with tremendous force directly in the career of 
the chieftain. Thundering it followed him. Il 
neared his chariot. Another turn and Bokulla. 



104 



BEHEMOTH. 



is crashed ; but the Mound-builders shout in 
one voice, " To the right, Bokulla ! to the 
right \" and, turning his chariot in that direc- 
tion, he escapes the descending ruin, though 
enveloped in the dust of its track. Emerging 
quickly from the cloud, and avoiding the rocky- 
mass, which rushed past him with terrible fury, 
Bokulla now reached the bottom of the moun- 
tain, and was surrounded instantly by innumera- 
ble Mound-builders, each with a fearful question 
on his lips, and the dread of a yet more fearful 
answer written in his countenance. Bokulla, 
alone and in flight, was a reply to all their 
thoughts could imagine or dread of what was 
terrible. Gazing upon him for a while in mo- 
tionless silence, they at length burst the stupor 
which made them dumb, and each one asked for 
husband, brother, son, who had gone forth, a 
few days since, full of life and vigor, against 
Behemoth. " Death, defeat, and flight !" were 
all that escaped from Bokulla, and, breaking 
his way through the multitude, he sought his 
own home. Gathering about the house of the 
chieftain, men, women, and children, in large 
crowds, they cried out through the live-long 
night, while their tears fell, for their relatives 
who had ventured to the battle, and asked 
wherefore they came not back ? 

The next day, about noon, there rushed into 
the village, covered with foam and quaking 
with fear, troops of bison, followed by the frame- 
work on which the towers and machines of war 
had been raised, and, clattering through the 
streets with their enormous and lumbering 
wheels till they reached their stalls, they fell d ead. 
To some of them a handful of men clung tena- 
ciously, though pale and terror-stricken; and 
to the rear of one, hung by his feet, which were 
entangled in the leathern strap that had bound 
the frame together, a lifeless body, the scull of 
which was broken by rude and hasty contact 
with the earth, while the tufts of hair which 
remained were matted with grass, thorns, and 
mire, gathered as it was drawn swiftly along 
through the different varieties of verdure, marsh, 
and brambles. 

The next day after that, at about night-fall, 
there came down the mountains which Bokulla 
had descended under circumstances of so much 
peril, a lean and tattered company, marshalled 
forward by the ghostlike figure of a chieftain, 
with a broken helm, husky voice, and swordless 
scabbard. They were a portion of the army 
which had gone forth with Bokulla, and had 
been reduced to their present pale and ragged 
condition partly by fear and partly by the want 
of food for the two days during which they had 
wandered in search of home. Many a wife and 
mother shed tears of mingled gratitude and pity 
as she looked upon the shattered wreck of her 
son or husband, thus cast up from the waves of 
war. Two or three days after this, and day by 
day, for some week or two, came into the vil- 
lages of the Mound-builders, single fugitives or 
in pairs, when they had coupled themselves to- 
gether, that, in this sorrowful fellowship, they 



might aid each other in bearing up against ter- 
ror, hunger, and death. 

And even after a month had rolled round, 
and tears had been shed and rites performed for 
the absentees, two or three strayed home luna- 
tic — poor idiots, whose brains had been crazed 
by the triple assault of fear, famine, and the 
dread of instant death under the hoofs of the 
enemy. From the account that could be gath- 
ered from their own wandering and confused 
wits, they had fled every inch of the way from 
the battle-ground under the terrible apprehen- 
sion that Behemoth was at their heels. Through 
brake and through briar they hastened. They 
had scrambled over rocks and waded wide 
ponds ; they had climbed trees and rested a lit- 
tle, and then, swinging themselves from the 
branches, had run miles over hot and stream- 
less prairies, until they had reached their native 
villages, sad, witless idiots ! 

The catastrophe now stood out before the 
Mound-builders, drawn in bold, strong, and 
fearful strokes ; painted in colors borrowed 
from the midnight, and dashed upon the can- 
vass, it almost seemed, by the hand of destiny 
itself. The malignant planet, which had so long 
lowered in the atmosphere, had now burst, and 
poured from its womb all that was dreadful, 
pernicious, and enduring. The earth was now 
to them a cold, comfortless prison, into which 
they were plunged by an inexorable power, and 
where they were doomed to drag through their 
allotted portion of life under the eye of an 
eternal and terrible foe, joyless, hopeless, and 
prostrate. The multitude gave themselves to a 
quiet and passionless despair, Bokulla was si- 
lent or invisible. 

Great occasions beget great men, while 
they have also a tendency to nurse into life 
petty spirits, which take the opportunity, un- 
invited, to push themselves into prominent 
posts. Thus the same emergency which elicited 
the resources of Bokulla's large and fruitful 
mind, also drew out the vagaries and absurdi- 
ties of a puny intellect, Kluckhatch by name. 
On account of his dwarfish size and an unlucky 
curvature in the legs, this valorous gentleman 
had been rejected from the military companies. 
Nevertheless he kept a drum on his own ac- 
count, with which he was wont to regale a rab- 
ble crowd of urchins and maidens ; making a 
monthly tour through the villages and refresh- 
ing them with the dulcet sounds. He also 
wore in this itinerant and volunteer soldiery of 
his a small sword; a bright pyramidal blade of 
steel with a handle of elk's horn, the tip of 
which was surmounted with a clasp or circlet 
of silver and ornamented with the device of an 
owl hooting. The person of Kluckhatch was, 
as I have hinted, pigmean rather than other- 
wise. He had a low forehead with prominent 
cheek bones, and a broad full-moon face with 
large eyes, in which idiocy and self-conceit pre- 
dominated, though they were occasionally en- 
livened with an expression of mirth and good- 
fellowship, and sometimes even brightened with 



BEHEMOTH. 



105 



a humorous conception. On the crown of his 
head, to complete his garniture, Kluckhatch 
bore a cap of conical figure, with a flattened 
circular summit, ending at the apex with a 
round button of copper. Attached to the sides 
of the cap were two large ear-flaps of deer- 
skin, or that of some other indigenous animal, 
made to cover ears as large. 

" I believe," said this self-constituted cham- 
pion, when every plan suggested and acted 
upon had proved fruitless, " I believe," said he, 
" I must take this huge blusterer in hand. I 
look for a mound of the largest size at least for 
my memory if I lay him at length, and a patent 
of nobility for my family. Kluckhatch is no 
fool — is he ?" asked the vainglorious militant, 
turning with a cocked eye to a shock-headed 
youth who stood gaping at his elbow. The 
boy replied with a similar squint, and Kluck- 
hatch ran on, detailing at length, like a crafty 
plotter, the whole course of strategy he intend- 
ed to put in practice against Behemoth, naming 
the time when, and the place where, he ex- 
pected to achieve his capture at least, if not 
his death. 

In accordance with this carefully matured 
plot, one bright and cold autumn morning 
Kluckhatch sallied forth accoutred to a point 
with dagger, hat and sword-belt, to which was 
attached, special ministrant in the anticipated 
capture, his little drum, with the melodious 
sounds of which lie expected to quell and molli- 
fy the mighty rage of Behemoth. Over his 
right shoulder he bore a light ladder of pine of 
great length, with which he intended to mount 
to Behemoth's neck and inflict the fatal wound 
with his trenchant blade. 

Thus armed and accoutred Kluckhatch set 
forth. Fortunately on the morning which he 
chose for his adventure, the Mastodon was not 
far off but pastured in a broad open meadow 
within sight of the Mound-builders' villages. 
When Kluckhatch first beheld him opening and 
closing his mighty jaws as he cropped the tall 
verdure, his soul trembled within him and vi- 
brated to and fro, like a mariner's needle, be- 
tween the determination to retreat and that to 
advance. At length however it settled down 
true to its purpose. He marched forward 
beating a reveille on his dwarfish drum, while 
he whistled faintly as an accompaniment. He 
was now within stone's throw of the monster. 
He had lowered the ladder from his shoulder, 
that he might be better prepared to scale the 
sides of the Beast. Behemoth ceased from the 
labor of feeding ; a moment his eye twinkled 
on the puissant Kluckhatch, and the next, un- 
rolling his trunk, he coiled it about the slender 
body of the adventurer, and lifting him gently 
from the earth, as gently tossed him some 
score of yards into a neighboring pond, which 
was about five feet deep, and mantled with a 
covering of stagnant water. Into this Kluck- 
hatch descended and fell amid a noisy company 
of large green bull-frogs who were holding a 
meeting for general consultation and the ex- 



pression of opinion. Amid the blustering as- 
sembly the valiant little hero fell. For a time, 
as he hung balanced in the air, it was doubtful 
which portion of his person would first pene- 
trate the water. 

The levity of his head and the weight of his 
splay-feet, at length brought the latter first to 
the pool, and dividing the stagnant surface, they 
sank through and reached a bottom of mud; 
still they sank and continued to settle down 
deeper and deeper. Kluckhatch knew not 
where his descent would stop, nor where in the 
end he might arrive. His feet at last found 
support just as his chin reached the waters' 
edge, and, looking up, the first object that 
fell upon his vision was a household of vener- 
able and contemplative crows who, seated on a 
dry tree at the edge of the pool, seemed to be 
philosophizing over his mishaps, in their most 
doleful discords. One, an old rake, with only 
an eye left in his head, appeared to Kluckhatch, 
as he leered knowingly upon him, to be a des- 
perate quiz. When, after many vain efforts, he 
had brought his scattered senses into something 
like order, reaching forth one hand he grasped 
his drum, which floated at a distance on the 
pool, and held it up tremblingly, while with the 
other he drew from his belt a drum-stick which 
survived his fall. Stretching out the hand that 
held the stick, he struck up a faint tatoo on the 
parchment, with the double purpose of driving 
off those accursed and hard-hearted crows, and 
also to draw help from the nearest village. 
To the instrumental sounds thus elicited he 
added an humble vocal effort. Here was a scene 
for a painter : Kluckhatch, the drum, and the 
crows, all in unison, running down the scale 
from lofty bass to shrill treble. 

The hero soon tired of his toilsome essays at 
the two kinds of music under his charge, and 
putting forth all his strength in a desperate 
venture, he succeeded, scrambling, floundering, 
and paddling, in reaching the shore endued in a 
coat-of-mail, composed of black slime and green 
ooze, with long locks of eel-grass dangling at 
his heels, as trophies of his exploit. Satisfied 
with this valorous attempt at the capture 
of the huge blusterer, Kluckhatch skulked 
home. 



PART SECOND. 

It was two hours before sunrise. Through 
the wide realm of the populous west not a soul 
was stirring, save a single human figure, which 
threaded its way through the streets of one of 
the great cities of the Mound-builders. This 
solitary object moved at a slow, measured pace, 
as if its progress was actually retarded by the 
weight of the thoughts with which it labored. 
The eyes gleamed "as if they beheld, afar elf. 
some enterprise of magnitude and obstinacy 
sufficient to call up the whole soul of the man, 
and the lines of the countenance worked, and 



106 



BEHEMOTH. 



the hands were clenched, as if he was already 
employed in the struggle. If one could have 
looked into his bosom, he might have seen all 
his faculties mustering to the encounter ; and, 
among other passions, aroused and assembling 
there, he might have noted discomfiture and 
mortification thrusting in their hated visages, 
and lending a keener stimulous and quicker mo- 
tion to the current of his thoughts. He might 
have also discovered an heroic resolution, al- 
most epic in its proportions and strength, tow- 
ering up from amid the ruins of many cast-down 
and desolated projects, and assuming to contend 
with unconquerable might. 

The solitary figure was that of Bokulla, who 
was thus venturing forth, self-exiled and alone, 
to discover, in the broad wilderness toward the 
sea, whatever means of triumph he might, over 
a power that had hitherto proved itself more 
than a match for human strength or cunning. 
A great spirit had taken possession of the chief- 
tain, and the shame of an inglorious defeat aid- 
ed to kindle the energy of his passions. Over 
that defeat he had already pondered, long, and 
anxiously. He confessed to himself that he had 
formed but a vague opinion of the hugeness and 
strength of Behemoth when he had proposed 
the battle. But he dwelt in the midst of a ter- 
rified and perishing people. As a man he was 
touched by the sufferings and alarms of his na- 
tion. Danger and death were before them, and 
no gate of safety or mercy opened. He saw 
this people, not only in the present time, but 
through a long futurity, scourged and suffering ; 
the old tottering into a hasty grave, pursued by 
a hideous phantom that increased its terrors ; 
the young growing up with images and thoughts 
of fear interwoven with their tender and pliant 
elements of being. 

Was there no one man, in this whole nation, 
who would go forth, in the spirit of martyrdom 
and self-sacrifice, and seek, even in the desert 
itself, the knowledge that would bring strength 
and safety in its wings ? It was he that was 
now passing away from his country, for a while, 
and launching himself in the boundless wilder- 
ness of the west. Championed by doubt and 
solitude, he was plunging into a region which 
stretched, he knew not whither, and to a fate, 
perchance, Ids heart dared not whisper to itself. 
What fruit might spring from this hardy enter- 
prise, it was vain to conjecture ; but he was 
determined to gather some knowledge of the 
habits, and some information as to the lodg- 
ment of this terrible scourge of his people. 
With rapid and firm step, he therefore proceed- 
ed on his way. By secret paths, and through 
dark woods, he advanced, and midday brought 
him to a spot which overlooked the whole of 
the wide territory of the Mound-builders. 

He stood upon a cliff which pushed out bold- 
ly from the wooded region that lay behind it, 
and hung, like a platform, over a valley and 
river that wound round its base. It was cov- 
ered in patches with verdure and earth, from 



which a few stately trees threw up their branch 
es, and underneath these Bokulla now stood. 

Casting his eye abroad, he beheld a scene 
which the boldest fancy of our time can scarce- 
ly conceive, accustomed as we are to think of 
the prairies as tenantless and houseless deserts, 
and the whole broad west as a wild, unpeopled 
region, never disturbed unless by bands of strag- 
gling Indian hunters, or a mad herd of buffalo, 
sweeping, like a tornado, over their bosom. 
From his lofty stand the self-exiled chieftain 
looked down upon a country belting a hundred 
leagues, swelling or declining through a glorious 
variety of hill, and vale, and meadow, with a 
thousand streams intersecting the whole, some- 
times mingling with each other, occasionally 
ploughing their way through a genial valley, 
or cutting deep into the heart of a mountain, 
whose slope was covered with forests. A nu- 
merous population lined their banks, or hovered 
on their eminences, whose dwellings and na- 
tional edifices reared themselves in the air and 
darkened the land with their number. Over 
those vast, verdant deeps, the prairies, were 
scattered, like islands, countless cities, in whose 
suburbs tall towers of granite and marble sprang 
to the sky, and resembled the masts of ships of 
war just putting out from the shore. In another 
direction, a mighty bastion of earth, with its 
round, green summit, heaved itself into view, 
like the back of some huge sea-monster ; and 
the long grass of the prairies, swept by occa- 
sional winds, rolled to and fro and furnished 
the ocean-like surges on which all these objects 
rode triumphant. 

Upon this scene Bokulla gazed long and 
earnestly, while many dark thoughts, and sad 
emotions followed each other like the clouds of 
summer through his mind, and darkened his 
countenance as they passed. Beneath him he 
saw a hundred cities devoted to ruin ; tower, 
and temple, and dwelling, crumbled to the earth, 
and no hand lifted to arrest their fall. A wide 
populace was wasting away from a robust and 
manly vigor, into a pale and shadow-like de- 
crepitude. Day by day the august majesty of 
a prosperous and ambitious nation dwindled 
into a shrunken and counterfeit image of itself. 
To them there was now no alternation of sun- 
shine or shadow ; seasons passed without their 
fruits ; the golden summer no longer smiled in 
their midst, and generous autumn departed with- 
out a blessing and unheeded. 

To these miserable and suffering realms Bo- 
kulla now bade farewell. His present enter- 
prise might be without fruit, or fraught with 
disastrous and fatal results to himself; yet, in 
the strength of nature, he would once more pre- 
sume to cope with the dreaded enemy, for he 
still believed that man must be triumphant, in 
the end, over this bestial domination. To man 
the earth was given as his kingdom, and all 
tribes and classes of creatures were made his 
subjects and vassals. In this faith he turned 
away from a scene which suggested so many 



BEHEMOTH. 



107 



fearful topics of thought, and bent his course 
toward the west, guided by such knowledge as 
he already enjoyed, and such marks as occurred 
to his observation, determined to avoid the face 
of man, and to be familiar only with solitude and 
danger, until some new means of triumph were 
clearly discovered. Pursuing this resolve, he 
pushed forward with speed and energy ; pluck- 
ing, by the way, wild berries and other natural 
fruits as food, and drinking of the cool, shaded 
rivulet, his only beverage ; for, from the first 
moment that he had conceived the thought of 
♦ this venturous self-exile, he vowed to cast him- 
self on nature, and to be received and sustained 
by her as her worthy child, or to perish as an 
alien and an outcast on her bosom. He had, 
therefore, come forth unprovided with food, and 
trusting entirely to her bounty for supply. 

Hand- in hand thus with liberal Nature, Bo- 
kulla pressed onward until night-fall, when he 
halted, and, sheltering himself safely within the 
hollow of a rock, he gathered himself for re- 
pose. 

Thus for many days did this solitary pilgrim 
journey on, seeking no other couch but the 
overhanging cliff or the sheltering bank, and 
finding no other canopy but the broad, open 
sky and the green roof of the branching tree. 
A constant grandeur of soul sustained him in 
the midst of many pressing hardships, and a 
noble purpose bore him forward as the winds 
propel the eagle that trusts to their strength. 
Guided by apparent tracks and obvious land- 
marks, about the middle of the afternoon of 
the second day he reached a solemn wood, into 
the heart of which he made his way. 

He was wearied with travel, and seeing the 
remains of a large old oak thrusting themselves 
up from the tangled and chequered shade, he 
seated himself upon them. The wild under- 
wood and smaller foliage were twisted into a 
thousand fantastic shapes, which wreathed 
themselves round, and the prodigal forest- 
flowers had scattered their colors here and there 
so profusely over the seat which the self-exile 
had chosen, as to furnish somewhat the ap- 
pearance of a cushioned throne. What wonder 
if the resemblance struck the excited imagina- 
tion of Bokulla, and his eye glanced about the 
forest as if in search of attendants that should 
hedge this seat of honor round. " Am I alone 
here !" half-muttered the chieftain. " Is all 
this pleasant realm of air, and this verdurous 
spot of earth void and barren ! No, no ; I am 
not in an unpopulous solitude even here. Airy 
citizens throng about me in this remote and un- 
frequented wood. Busy hopes, immortal de- 
sires, passions, longings, and aspirations that 
lengthen like shadows the nearer we approach 
the sunset of life. Mighty and tumultuous 
wishes and emotions gather around me in this 
pat lil oss and woodland region, and tell me I am 
not, that I can not be, alone. Shadowy crea- 
tures ! which sway us beyond all corporal pow- 
ers and instruments — ye swarm now in these 
shaded walks— and foremost Ambition and 



Fame, glorious twins ! stand forth and tower 
in cloudy stature, grasping at impossible objects 
and plucking at the heavens themselves ! Im- 
mortal powers and faculties ! in these retired 
and natural chambers, I know you as the in- 
ternal and silent agencies which are to guide 
and sustain me through this hardy and ventur- 
ous pilgrimage." 

In this wood he found a suitable shelter and 
stretched himself for sleep. Notwithstanding 
the great cares with which he was oppressed, 
the mind of the chieftain was visited by pleas- 
ant dreams ; and he was borne far back from 
the gloomy and troubled present, into an old 
and cheerful time, where everything wore a 
countenance of joy, and a golden atmosphere 
floated about all. He wandered along the 
banks of mighty streams, watching the careless 
flight of birds, or the idle motions of their cur- 
rents, on which many vessels of gallant trim, 
with every sail set, were hastening toward the 
sea. Around him a thousand familiar sounds 
made the common music of day ; trumpets 
were sounded in the distance; citizens were 
hurrying forth or home on errands of business, 
or pleasure, or tender sorrow ; and all was 
human and delightful. The chieftain himself 
seemed to have the heart of youth, and to ram- 
ble onward amid these pleasant scenes of life 
as if no morrow was coming, as if the sun that 
was now in mid-heaven would never set. 

Near the close of the night, this pageant 
passed away, and the slumbers of the champion 
were interrupted by a loud sound, like that of 
a storm gathering in the distance, and which 
drew nearer by, increasing every moment 
Presently it seemed to cross the western quar 
ter of the wood with a clashing and tumultu- 
ous noise, resembling that of a great cataract, 
and then it passed far to the northwest, and 
died away after a long time, like rattling thun- 
der, among the distant peaks of the mountains. 

Nothing could be more alarming to the ima- 
gination than this midnight tumult, and Bokul- 
la felt that his situation was like that of the 
wretched mariner, whose bark is dashed on 
the rocks of some inhospitable shore, where 
night and the raging winds press on him be- 
hind, and darkness and the wild beast prepare 
to fasten on his weather-beaten body as he 
strikes the land. But no sound that Bokulla 
had ever known could represent the character 
of that which rebellowed, and thundered, and 
died away. The stormy shouts of a warlike as- 
sault, the furious outcry of popular rage, the 
howling of winter winds, all commixed, would be 
an imperfect image of its depth, and strength, and 
varying loudness. In the morning, disturbed and 
perplexed, he girded himself again to his task, and 
shaped his course toward that region of the for- 
est by which the indescribable tumult had 
swept. An hour's swift travel brought him to 
a large wooded slope, which presented to his 
view, in the uncertain light of a sun obscured 
by the gray mist of morning, ;m astonishing 
spectacle. A thousand vast old trees, each 



108 



BEHEMOTH. 



large enough for the main column of a temple, 
were dashed against the upland and lay there, 
leaning half-way down, as if they had contest- 
ed against overthrow, like mighty ships, blown 
over in the harbor of some great city, when the 
north has burst upon them and commanded 
that they should veil their pennons and high- 
aspiring standards. 

From obvious footmarks he easily discovered 
the course which the strength that caused this 
desolation had taken, and pursuing the indica- 
tions thus furnished, he was soon out upon an 
open plain. The region that now spread be- 
fore him was a wide and trackless waste, bar- 
ren, void of vegetation, and apparently deserted 
of nature. Such herbage as lingered about its 
borders, was small, scanty, and withered, and 
crept gloomily along the dusty banks of dried- 
up brooks and rivulets. Over this arid desert, 
as Bokulla slowly plodded, he discovered the 
same large foot-prints as he had followed all 
along, crossing and re-crossing each other, 
sometimes diverging and again keeping straight 
on, in a manner so irregular and wandering, as 
to bewilder him and set any attempt to pursue 
them entirely at nought. 

In some places the earth was ploughed up 
and rent with seams recently made, and in 
others it was scattered far and wide, in irregu- 
lar and broken heaps. The whole wilderness 
presented an appearance as if it had been re- 
cently trampled by some angry and barbaric 
puissance, that had swept it from end to end, 
like a storm. 

What now rendered his situation still 
more perplexing, was that which would seem 
at first a source of self-gratulation and com- 
fort, after the fearful sounds of the preceding 
night. A dead silence hung all around him, 
which was, if possible, more dreary and de- 
pressing than the unearthly noises of midnight. 
A soundless and voiceless quiet filled the air, 
the sky, and brooded over the inanimate sea of 
sand slumbering at his feet. 

Through this confused and desolate region, 
the chieftain resolved to make his way to the 
summit of some one of the mountains that dom- 
inated this arid plain at its farthest extremity, 
and thence, as from a citadel, look abroad and 
make such discoveries as he might. 

Bokulla at length reached the summit of a 
high mountain, and looking forth toward the 
east, he beheld a mighty region of hill and val- 
ley, whose immensity astonished and over- 
whelmed him. In one direction, a hundred 
peaks towered one above the other, until the 
farthest was lost, it seemed, on the very thresh- 
old of the sky. In another, torrents dashed 
through numerous declivities, tearing down 
mountains, it almost seemed, in their rage, and 
threatening to wash away the very foundations 
of the earth, as they leaped over rocks, and 
crags, and rugged precipices. Huge passes 
and defiles that ploughed their way through the 
bosoms of solid mountains, and led down, as it 
were, to the central fires, were visible in other 



quarters, and exhibited more or less of their 
dreary turnpikes, as the sunlight fell upon one 
or the other. As Bokulla looked forth, he des- 
cried a dark object moving slowly along a distant 
peak. Sometimes it paused, and then again 
advanced ; at length it plunged down the moun- 
tain-side into a deep and dark valley, but still 
some portion of it was apparent ; and at inter- 
vals, as it crossed a seam or gap that intersect- 
ed the valley, the whole figure came into view. 
Thus it wound through the immense region, al- 
most the whole time conspicuous to the eye of 
the gazer, who, however, was unable to dis- 
cover its character, so remote was the distance 
at which it moved. At length it emerged from 
the many defiles and declivities, among which 
it had passed, and came out upon the ope. 
plain. 

As a numerous fleet of war- ships, all their 
canvass spread, double some one of the Atlan- 
tic capes, and come within the ken of the 
anxious watcher on shore, so did this vast ob- 
ject steer round the mountain-base and stand 
before the eye of Bokulla. Like a huge fog 
that has settled in autumn upon the ground, 
and creeps along until it has mastered the earth 
with its broad dimensions, so did the stature 
and bulk of the Mastodon tower and enlarge as 
it drew nigh. Among those mighty peaks, and 
along that immeasurable plain, he seemed to 
move the suitable and sole inhabitant. Rocks 
piled on rocks, and rivers, the parents of 
oceans, calling unto rivers as large, and dread- 
ful summits that hung over the earth and 
threatened to crush it, were not its massy plains 
and platforms broad enough to uphold moun- 
tains a hundred fold vaster, this was the proper 
birth-place and dwelling of the mightiest crea- 
ture of the earth. 

Amid these great elements of nature, Bokulla 
beheld the motions of the Mastodon as he trode 
the earth in gigantic sway ; and thought swelled 
upon tumultuous thought, as waves that break 
over each other in the middle ocean, at each 
step of that unparalleled and majestic progress. 
What wonder, if at that moment he deemed the 
great creature before him unassailable and im- 
mortal ? Behemoth passed onward, and for the 
first time in many hours was lost to the gaze 
of the chieftain, as he entered a dark gap in a 
great mountain-range far to the east. Intent 
on the daring and venturous purpose which 
had drawn him forth into the wilderness, he 
descended from his lofty station, and shaped his 
course to the barriers within which the uncon- 
quered brute had passed. With incredible la- 
bor he toiled over a thousand obstacles ; clam- 
bering high mountains, plodding through gloomy 
valleys, and compassing, by contrivance some- 
times, sometimes by sheer strength, broad 
streams, he found himself at length, as the 
night approached, fixed on a lofty ridge, whence 
his eye fell upon a spacious amphitheatre of 
meadow, completely shut in by rocks and moun- 
tains, save at a single narrow cut or opening. 
In the centre of this he beheld Behemoth cou- 



BEHEMOTH. 



109 



chant (his head turned toward the chieftain 
himself) like a sublime image of stone in the 
middle of a silent lake. Bokulla exhibited no 
symptoms of terror or trepidation, and the beast 
lay motionless and quiet. Great emotions filled 
the breast of the chieftain as he looked upon 
the Mastodon reposing in this fortified solitude. 
He closely scrutinized the whole circle of moun- 
tains, and took an accurate survey of the gate 
which led out into the open country beyond. 
Among other circumstances, he observed large 
hollows, here and there, in different quarters of 
the plain, as if worn there by the constant hab- 
itation of Behemoth; and also, that as the 
wind sighed through the branches of trees that 
stood in its centre and along its border, the 
Mastodon moved up and down the amphi- 
theatre with a slow and gentle motion, as if 
soothed by the sound. 

While he was thus engaged, night descended 
upon the scene ; and the dark hours were to be 
passed by Bokulla alone in that far-off wilder- 
ness, and within reach of the mighty and terri- 
ble foe. As well as he might he addressed 
himself to sleep ; but it was almost in vain, for 
it seemed as if the fearful strength beneath was 
slumbering at his side, and as if its tall, cold 
shadow fell upon him and froze the very blood 
in his veins. Armed beings of an inconceiv- 
able and superhuman stature passed and re- 
passed before his mind ; and the vision of a 
conflict mightier than any that his mortal eyes 
had ever witnessed, in which huge trumpets 
brayed and enormous shields clashed against 
each other, swept along. Then it changed, 
and it seemed as if the mountains rocked to and 
fro, and pent winds strove to topple down peaks 
and pinnacles, while in their midst one mighty 
Figure, neither of man nor of angel, stood 
chained, and, in a deep and fearful voice, cried 
to the heavens for succor. Perplexed by im- 
ages and visions like these, Bokulla wakened 
before the dawn, and turned his steps, with 
scarce any guide or landmark, toward his own 
home. 

And now an appalling fate was before the 
champion, for he was without food*in the very 
centre of the desert. The liberal fare upon 
which he had at first subsisted, was gone long 
ago, and the scanty supply which nature had 
lately furnished from hedges and meadows, had 
entirely ceased. Barrenness, barrenness, bar- 
renness, spread all around. After toil and ex- 
ertion of body and mind, almost beyond mortal 
strength, he seemed likely to perish in the 
wastes with the great project that his soul had 
conceived unknown to living man. Intermin- 
able and gloomy disasters lowered over his 
country if he should perish in the wilderness. 
He struggled onward with anguish and hunger 
at his heart. 

At last, when his strength was fast ebbing, 
he came at night-fall upon a vast open plain, 
and dragged himself, with a pang in every step, 
to a crag that jutted, like a great fang, in its 
very centre. Upon this he raised himself, and 



with features sternly set against the darkness, 
awaited his fate. Narrower and narrower the 
great circle of the horizon closed upon him, 
binding him where he sat in an inexorable 
grasp. A black universe pressed upon him on 
every side, and seemed eager to smother him 
up in gloom. Against hunger and terrible dark- 
ness and death, he folded his arms. Even then 
he strained his gaze through the thick night, 
toward the quarter of the sky under which lay 
the homes of the Mound-builders, as if to learn 
by some light that flickered up in the distance, 
whether any, the faintest hope, kindled a fire- 
side among them yet. Blackness and infinite 
gloom alone swelled about him, and filled the 
whole heaven. 

No sleep came to his eyes that night, nor 
was he altogether wakeful, but lingered in a 
middle world, where the images of the new 
being and the old held him fast, or yielded him 
for a time to the other. At one time, a voice 
was at his ear, whispering peace and tranquil 
hours henceforth for ever ; a voice that came 
he knew from a shining face. At another, a 
cry, as of one shrieking in excess of pain, 
came booming through the dark, and cut all 
his human sense of suffering to the quick. 

At length the slow morning dawned again, 
and looking forward, where he thought he had 
discerned a dull marsh stretching to bar his 
way, he found instead a long green line of 
verdure, smiling freshly in the eye of the light. 
In its very midst there stood a calm, brown 
bird, reposing with an infinite quietude, with 
an eye obliquely turned upward, contemplative- 
ly regarding the sun, and stretching its wings 
to catch the warm breeze that rippled past. 

A new pleasure shot into the soul of the 
champion, beholding this easy mirth of nature 
— this so-great repose : the bird heaving itself 
sluggishly on the wing, crept lazily off through 
the air ; and, regarding it, while his mind was 
thus gently moved, a sound, as of a beautiful 
hoof set upon the earth, struck upon his ear. 
He turned back, and at the spot from which 
the bird had taken flight, there stood a steed, 
so young, so smooth, so shapely in every limb, 
and so like a happy creature of darkness in 
every line of its glossy black, that Bokulla 
mused upon it as upon a vision. 

Tranquil as the air it stood, its head uplifted 
only and drinking in the sky, with its neck 
stretched far away toward the home of the 
champion. Bokulla knew the omen, and with 
a spirit fresh and unbroken he stood beside the 
steed, and at a bound was his master. 

Away they flew — the crag, the pWTfi, the 
sky dying behind them at a thought. Gently 
through fair green glades — at a bound over vales 
and rugged steeps — swiftly past stupendous 
peaks, that held aloft their dazzling snow-sheets, 
as with a mighty tented Staff— along a heavy 
river that strove to run an even race with 
them, — past cataracts that hurst on the wilder- 
ness in crashing peels — they speeded on. Over 
hills, through forests, and along stream-sides, 



110 



BEHEMOTH. 



the wondrous flight kept on all that day and all 
that night too (Heaven in its deep providences 
knew how), when, at the next day's dawn, up- 
on a mountain-brow the steed stayed his steps, 
and a populous city burst upon the gaze of Bo- 
kulla, directly at his feet. The steed stood 
still in the immoveable quiet in which the chief- 
tain first beheld him — silent, gentle, beautiful, 
the calm counter-image to Behemoth. Wide 
upon the plain below the scattered Mound- 
builders stood about, striving to worship as of 
old ; and as their lifted look fell upon the new 
vision, they clapped their hands for joy, and 
shouted like men before whose shipwrecked 
gaze land suddenly springs to view. It showed 
to them fair, beautiful indeed, but when, 
breaking the spell of silence and quietude that 
held him, the steed hastened down the moun- 
tain-side, and galloped through their streets, 
they beheld the rider — his features gaunt and 
unearthly, his hair streaming wildly to the 
wind — they fled from his steps with a new 
fear. 

Some sought refuge in their dwellings, 
while others rushed out to gaze upon him 
as he scampered, wild and spectre-like, along 
the distance ; and others gathered together, 
and, in subdued voices, conjectured or can- 
vassed the character of the sudden apparition. 
Many wild guesses and shrewd suggestions 
were ventured. 

" This is a fiend of the prairie," said one, " he 
that rambles up and down the big meadow, 
blowing his horn, and who calls the wolves and 
goblins together when a carcass is thrown out 
or a traveller perishes in crossing them." 

" It is a lunatic, escaped from his friends," 
said a second, " who has been out, seeking his 
wits in the mountains." 

" You are wide of the mark, my good sirs," 
said another, a sharp-eyed little man, glaring 
about and looking up at the windows, as if 
afraid of being overheard ; and the group 
pressed more closely about him, as if expecting 
a communication of great weight and shrewd- 
ness — " a whole bowshot wide of the mark — it 
is the keeper of Behemoth !" 

At this they all turned pale and lifted up their 
eyes in astonishment, and admitted that nothing 
could be nearer the truth. 

By this time Bokulla had reached his own 
door, and, throwing himself from his steed of 
the desert, prepared to enter in ; but, ere he 
could effect this object, several stout citizens 
pressed before him and arrested his steps. 

" Wherefore is this ?" said the foremost. 
" will you rush into a house of mourning in 
this guise ? Know you not that this is the 
mansion of Bokulla the champion — and that his 
widow is in sackcloth and tears within ? Be- 
gone elsewhere, madman !" 

This remonstrance was seconded by another, 
and a third, until it swelled so high that the 
crowd would have seized him, and wreaked 
some injury upon his person, had he not suc- 
ceeded in obtaining a moment's pause ; and, 



standing on an elevation, he shouted out, 
" Peace, Mound-builders, it is Bokulla before 
you !" 

At this declaration many began to recognise 
in the shrunken features and toil-worn frame 
before them, their great champion and chief- 
tain, and a shout was raised, " Life and health 
to Bokulla, the father of his country !" " Pleas- 
ant dew fall upon him !" " Long may he tread 
the green earth under his feet !" and many na- 
tional invocations and blessings. 

The rumor now spread rapidly abroad, and 
the cry was taken up, wherever it reached, and 
renewed with hearty goodwill, for all were re- 
joiced at the return of their great leader, whom 
some had considered lost for ever, and who all 
admitted was the only one that could contend, 
with any chance of success, against their bar- 
baric foe. Even the little group of gossips that 
had construed him into a fiend, a lunatic, and 
the keeper of Behemoth, but a moment before, 
now rushed eagerly forward, and were among 
the first to welcome him back, the sharp-eyed 
little man invoking a special blessing on his 
pleasant countenance, which looked, he said, 
" like that of a saving angel !" Escaping from 
these numerous tokens of admiration and re- 
gard, Bokulla withdrew into his dwelling, and 
the crowd, after lingering about for many hour? 
to glean such information as they might of his 
absence and to catch a view of his person, at 
length dispersed, each, he knew not why, with 
a lighter heart, and more joyous look, than 
had fallen to his lot for many long and weary 
months. — 

From the dwelling of Bokulla let us turn our 
steps, for a while, toward the suburbs of the 
city, and enter the sick-chamber of Kluckhatch, 
the blusterer. The adventure of that valiant 
pretender against Behemoth had been accom- 
panied with serious, and, from the aspect they 
at present assumed, perhaps fatal conse- 
quences. The alarm of spirits which he had 
suffered, together with the dreary submersion 
in the pool, had thrown the adventurer into a 
violent ague. Day by day the malady became 
more tyrannical, and the mind of Kluckhatch 
more fretful and restless. His soul seemed, 
like the sun, to expand as it approached its fi- 
nal eclipse, and nature, who, at his birth, had 
exhibited the art and skill of a bottle-conjurer 
in crowding so puissant a spirit into so narrow 
a body, now seemed at a loss to drive the obsti- 
nate tenant from its residence. The little man 
clung more desperately to life the more forci- 
ble the attempt made to wrest it from him. The 
pale ague assailed him with its whole band of 
forces ; throttling him by the throat, as it were, 
it essayed, by rough and uncourteous usage, to 
shake the vital spirit from him, but it adhered 
closer and closer, and the attempt of nature to 
cast off the pigmy militant, resembled that of 
a horse, in whose flank, on a midsummer's day, 
a burr has chanced to fix itself; he feels an- 
noyed and irritated — he whisks the hairy brush 
to and fro — he runs — he gallops — he rears — he 



BEHEMOTH. 



Ill 



plunges, bnt all in vain, the barbarous annoy- 
ance clings to him with the more zeal, until, at 
some quiet moment, it drops gently from its 
hold, and disturbs him no more. Thus stood 
the account between nature and Kluckhatch. 
In his bed he lay, trembling like an earthquake 
or an ocean, under the coverlid. After a while 
the ague relaxed, and the fever came on ; and 
then he sat up in his couch, and grasping a 
wooden sword, which had been made to amuse 
his sick and distempered fancy, he made airy 
thrusts and lounges, and called out as if he 
were plunging it deep in invisible ribs, or hack- 
ing at the head of some monstrous chimera. 
Then, again, he wonld appear to seize the end 
of some palpable object, and, drawing it along, 
would measure and cut off pieces of a yard in 
length at a time. It was evident, from the whole 
tenor of his strange action, that the Mastodon 
was in his phantasy ; and this was amply con- 
firmed by his breaking out, after the fever had 
partially subsided, into the following wild in- 
vectives, with a gasp between each, into which 
his soul seems to have thrown its whole col- 
lected powers. 

" This huge bully ; this fleshly continent ; 
this vagabond traveller ; this beast mountain ; 
this tornado in leather ; this bristly goblin ;" — 

" Pray be calm, Kluckhatch," whispered the 
shock-headed youth, who stood at his bedside, 
terrified and quaking. 

" This huge, moving show ; this two-horned 
wonder ; this tempest of bull's-beef ; this land- 
leviathan ; fiend ; wood-elf; this devil's ambas- 
sador; this territory of calves'-hide, stretched 
on a mountain ; this untanned libel on leather- 
dressers ; this unhung homicide ;" — 

" Uncle Kluckhatch," again interrupted his 
attendant, " Uncle Kluckhatch, wherefore do 
you rail after this fashion ? you but madden 
your fever." 

" This empire of bones and sinew ; this mon- 
strous government on legs ; this tyrant with a 
tail ; this rake-helly ; this night-brawler ; this 
measureless disgust ; this lusty thresher, with 
his endless flail ; this magnified ox; this walk- 
ing abomination ; this enormous discord, sound- 
ing in base ; this huge, tuneless trombone ;" — 

The sick dwarf fell back on his pillow, ex- 
hausted, his lips still moving as if laden with 
other bitter epithets of denunciation. His hour 
now rapidly drew nigh ; his strength gradual- 
ly ebbed away, and, at length, the conviction 
that he must die forced its way into the heavy 
brain of Kluckhatch. In a few words he made 
his humble, and, of course, lean will. "I leave," 
said he, to his gaping companion, " I leave to 
you my fame, my virtues, and my drum !" He 
then gave directions for his burial, which, if 
obeyed, would make it a spectacle rare and un- 
exampled ; and, rising once more in his bed, 
he said he wished to expire in a sitting attitude. 

The last sinking wave of life was dying up- 
on the shore. His simple attendant had taken 
in his hand, to survey its fashion and its prop- 



erties, the testamentary bequest of his depart- 
ing friend. 

" Strike up ! strike up, once more !" ex- 
claimed Kluckhatch, as his eye kindled with the 
gleam of death, and as the first sounds rolled 
from the drum under the obedient hand of its 
new possessor, the spirit of the pretender, min- 
gling with them, left the earth. 

The second morning after his death, at an 
early hour, the funeral procession set out from 
the domicil of Kluckhatch for the tomb of his 
forefathers, a snug family vault, just beyond the 
skirts of the town. Under the direction of the 
shock -headed youth, who enacted the master of 
ceremonies, the solemn cavalcade was drawn 
up, and proceeded in the following order : 

First, led on by the legatee himself, in front 
of whose person hung suspended the testamen- 
tary drum, hobbled slowly along a sorry and 
cadaverous jade, which had been the pack-sad- 
dle of Kluckhatch in his strolling tours. One 
eye of the sad creature was wholly closed and 
useless, but the other, as if to make amends, 
was a sea-green orb of twice the ordinary di- 
mension, and, with its ample circle of white, 
blazed like the moon crossing the milky-way 
in the sky. His lank, hollow body bore clear 
evidence of the neglected meadows and scant 
mangers of the Mound-builders; for he had 
been on fast, broken by occasional spare mor- 
sels, for more than a month, and glided along 
in the procession like a spectre. Behind this 
monkish-looking beast followed a low wagon 
or four-wheeled cart, drawn by a pair of ven- 
erable and spiritless bisons, in which sat the 
blusterer himself, erect and in the costume of 
e very-day life, his strange red coat shining like 
a meteor, conspicuous from afar, while his co- 
nical cap nodded gayly to the one side or the 
other, as the wind swayed it. The strange 
whipster held the reins firmly between his skel- 
eton fingers, and exhibited on his countenance 
a broad, ghastly grin, which, at the first view, 
startled the beholders, but after they had recov- 
ered from the shock, caused them to burst into 
a hearty laugh. On each side of the vehicle 
thus strangely driven, marched, in serious or- 
der, six sturdy men, each bearing a huge rus- 
tic pipe or whistle, wrought of reed, on which 
they blew soft and melancholy music. Behind 
the wagon, the favorite dog of Kluckhatch, 
crestfallen and whining, was led in a string. 
In the rear of this faithful mourner followed the 
friends and admirers of the deceased, and after 
these scrambled a promiscuous rout of his towns- 
people, of every variety, age, sex, and hue. 

Creation itself, both overhead and on the 
earth, was something in unison with the gro- 
tesque obsequies. In one quarter of the sky, 
which resembled the bottom of a rich sea, sud- 
denly disclosed, a vast cloud, like a whale, 
floundered and tumbled over the azure depths. 
In another, the clouds lay piled in heaps of 
shining silver; here they assumed the form of 
a shattered wreck, fleecy vapors standing out 



112 



BEHEMOTH. 



as mast or bowsprit, with evanescent bars for 
rigging, and there a black and jagged mass of 
them, stretched along like a reef of dangerous 
and stubborn rocks. Lower down, a small, dis- 
mantled fragment, mottled with white, sunlit 
scales, represented a mackerel, at full length, 
opening his mouth and biting at the tail of a 
cloudy grampus that stood rampant just over- 
head. In the midair, drawn thither by the strange- 
ly exposed remains of Kluckhatch, a sable-coated 
troop of ravens kept the procession company, 
occasionally demanding, in coarse, rude clam- 
ors, their reversionary right in the deceased. 
Now and then a timid bird put forth his head 
from the trees and bushes at the roadside, and 
twittering for a moment, and seeming to smile 
at the defunct rider, hopped back into its cool 
hiding-place. 

In a little while they reached the place of 
burial, a small, suburban vault, the passage to 
which, through a wooden door, led down to a 
score of cells or apartments, all of which, save 
one, were occupied. Over the entrance to the 
vault stood the weather-bleached skeleton of a 
robustious ancestor of Kluckhatch, balancing 
on one of his short, stout legs, flourishing 
the other as if in the act of going through a 
pirouette, and holding, in his outstretched right 
hand, the effigies of an owl, the favorite fam- 
ily bird and device. 

For what reason, or whether for any, the lit- 
tle, queer skeleton occupied this position, it 
would be now difficult to decide. Perhaps, in 
his lifetime, he had been a hard, weather-beat- 
en hunter, who preferred to be left thus in the 
free, naked air, and under the open sky, which 
during life he had enjoyed without stint or cir- 
cumscription. Passing underneath the figure 
of this portentous guardian, and through the 
passage, they bore the mortal remains of the 
last of the Kluckhatches, and placed them in 
their upright posture in the only cell which re- 
mained untenanted. The moment it was known 
that the corse was deposited in its final place 
of rest, the twelve stout whistlers let off four 
successive volleys of their peculiar music; the 
dog came forward and howled, and the shock- 
headed youth stood at the entrance of the vault 
sobbing and weeping, while the beast, whose 
halter he held in his hand, silently devoured 
the drumhead and looked inside for further vi- 
ands. A few moments more and the door was 
closed for ever between the world and Kluck- 
hatch. 

The unexpected departure of Bokulla from 
their midst had been a source of fruitful and 
anxious speculation to the Mound-builders. 
They were conscious of his absence, as if the 
great orb itself had left the skies and deprived 
the earth of its light and influence. His pres- 
ence diffused among them the only cheerful ray 
that enlightened their gloomy condition ; and 
although his recent enterprise had proved dis- 
astrous, they were satisfied that the great chief- 
tain would promptly grasp the first favoring cir- 



cumstance, and energetically use it against the 
fearful foe. 

Of the causes of his absence none were ad- 
vised, nor as to the direction his steps had ta- 
ken. Some dreaded lest he had gone forth to 
perish by his own hand in the wilderness ; and, 
by these, scouts had been dismissed in every 
quarter, to bring back the fugitive warrior, or 
his body, for honorable sepulture, if he had per- 
ished. The agitation and fear, excited by the 
causeless and unexplained absence of Bokulla, 
were only less than those occasioned by the ter- 
rible presence of the Mastodon. His return, 
therefore, was welcomed with every demon- 
stration of rejoicing. Lights were displayed, 
as glad signals, from every tower ; processions 
and cavalcades were formed to make triumphal 
marches through the realm, and bodies of citi- 
zens constantly gathered under the window of 
the chieftain, to express their delight at his re- 
turn. During a whole week this universal fes- 
tivity was sustained, and it seemed as if the 
flower of national hope once more blossomed 
in their midst. Merry games were celebrated 
in their gardens ; religious worship again as- 
sumed its robe, and walked forth with serene 
and placid features in the traces of its early 
duty. 

What gave additional animation to this un- 
wonted scene was, that Behemoth, during its 
continuance, ceased to sadden or alarm them 
with his presence ; it may have been that the 
dazzling splendor of the illumination, and the 
loud sound of innumerable instruments all 
playing together, kept him back. 

About two weeks after the return of the self- 
exiled chieftain, and at the close of their joyous 
celebrations, he appeared before the Mound- 
[ builders, and declared " that his strange and 
unexplained absence had not been without its 
! uses. Nature," he said, " had put forth her 
mighty hand and generously furnished the 
means of deliverance. Liberty was now before 
them, but it must be attained through many 
; perils and through toil, sanctified, perchance, 
| with blood. Like the swimmer that nears the 
I shore, they must now buffet the wave of hostile 
j fortune with their sternest strength. It might 
J be that once more the firm and smiling con- 
tinent of joy, of honor, and peace, could be 
reached. If so, Heaven should be praised with 
a deep sense of gratitude, and the realm should 
ring through all its borders with sounds of glo- 
rious triumph \" 

He then stated that he had discovered in his 
wanderings a mighty meadow where Behemoth 
was wont to pasture ; and that if they would 
choose a delegation to visit it in company with 
himself, he would endeavor to point them to a 
sure and safe method of subduing the enemy. 

At this suggestion the populace shouted 
loudly, and echoed the name of Bokulla with 
the most eager and fervent expressions of ad- 
miration. They readily appointed three emi- 
nent citizens to accompany him. The next 



BEHEMOTH. 



113 



morning they set out, and having in due course 
of time reached the locality, they selected an 
elevation which commanded the whole prospect 
at once. 

All admitted, as they looked upon the high 
walLs that girt the broad and spacious meadow, 
and on the single narrow opening which led 
from the enclosure, that nature had furnished 
an extraordinary aid toward the capture of the 
invincible brute. Far around on both sides 
from the central position which they occupied, 
the stupendous upright battlement of moun- 
tains stretched — a peak here and there shooting 
up an immense tower, and a crag occasionally 
thrusting itself forth from the general mass of 
perpendicular rocks, like the quaint head of a 
beast, or the rugged and ugly features of a hu- 
man being, as the fancy chose to give it shape 
and likeness. The whole hedged in a meadow 
covered with a fertile growth of tall, rich ver- 
dure — dotted by a few scattered trees — and in- 
tersected by a stream of considerable breadth 
and depth, which flowed through its centre, 
and formed an outlet in a narrow passage un- 
derneath the mountains. The natural opening 
leading from this broad enclosure, was about 
five hundred feet wide, and walled on either 
side by gigantic fragments of stone, from whose 
huge posterns it seemed as if in an earlier age 
of the world an immense gate may have swung 
and shut in captives of mighty size and fearful 
guilt. Nothing could be conceived a more se- 
cure and dreadful prison than these vast walls 
of rock : and no solitude could be more dreary 
than one thus fortified as it were by nature, 
and made sublimely desolate by barriers and 
enclosures like these. 

All felt, thus gazing, the grandeur of the 
thought presented to their mind by Bokulla, 
and they turned and looked upon the coun- 
tenance of the chieftain, as if they expected to 
discover there features more than human. Bo- 
kulla stood silent. 

" The thought is mighty and worthy of Bo- 
kulla !" at length, exclaimed one of his com- 
panions, a man of generous and ardent heart ; 
" here we triumph or the story of our life closes 
in endless defeat, and our fate makes us and 
ours perpetual bondmen." 

" Who is it," interposed a second of less san- 
guine temper, " who is it that dare visit the 

i panther in his den ? or grasp the thunder from 

i its cloud on the mountain-top ? — It were as safe 
to climb into the eagle's nest as disturb this 

I monstrous creature in his lair !" 

" Terrible as the north when it lightens and 
is full of storms — inexorable as death, will be 

' the encounter !" cried a supporter of the second 
speaker — " I would sooner plunge headlong 
from a tower, than venture within this guarded 
enclosure !" 

" What say you, my friends !" cried Bokulla, 
springing to his feet, " what say you to an em- 
bassy to the brute on bended knee ? I doubt 
not if we came as humble worshippers and sup- 
pliants, and consented to choose him as our na- 
il 



tional idol, he would abate something of his 
fierceness !" 

" Now heaven and all good planets forbid !" 
cried his companions with one accord. 

"Nothing better and nothing nobler, then, 
may be tried, than the great suggestion of Bo- 
kulla !" said the first speaker. " Here let us 
wrestle with fate and die, then, if die we must, 
in this broad and open arena, where the heavens 
themselves, and the inexorable stars, shall be 
witnesses of our struggle !" 

Taking up their position on an elevated rock, 
shaded by trees which overlooked the whole 
scene, they consulted as to the most proper and 
speedy method of accomplishing their purpose. 

After a consultation of several hours, during 
which the sun had fallen far in the west, and 
after weighing anxiously every circumstance 
that could have bearing or influence on the 
event, they determined in their open council- 
chamber, amid the solemn silence of the wil- 
derness, that an attempt must be made to im- 
prison Behemoth in the vast, natural dungeon 
at their feet, by building a stout wall across its 
present opening. 

And furthermore, that it would be matter of 
afterthought to decide, if successful in the first, 
by what means his death was to be wrought. 
Their resolves had scarcely taken this shape, 
when a heavy shadow fell suddenly in their 
midst, as if a thick cloud had covered the sun ; 
and looking forth for its source, they beheld 
Behemoth walking silently and ponderously 
along the ridge of the opposite mountains. 
They arrested their deliberations, and rising in 
a body, watched the progress and actions of the 
brute. In a short time he descended from the 
summit, and attaining its foot by a sloping and 
broad path, in a moment presented himself at 
the gap, which conducted into the mountainous 
amphitheatre. Stalking through, he advanced 
to its far extremity, and stretching himself on 
the bank of the stream, and in the cool shadow 
of the mountains, he prepared for repose. 

His companions had already learned from 
Bokulla, that the Mastodon was in the habit of 
paying long periodical visits to this place, and 
of feeding, for considerable periods of time, on 
its abundant and savory verdure. Nothing 
could have been more opportune to their con- 
sultation than the arrival of Behemoth. His 
sudden coming was an argument for activity 
and despatch. 

The fifth day from this, the Mound-builders 
arrived in considerable numbers, in a wood 
near the amphitheatre, bringing with them in 
wagons the tools and implements required in 
the proposed labor. They immediately set 
about the task, and commenced hewing large 
blocks of stone and dragging them to the mouth 
of the gap, but not so near as to obstruct it. 
The whole body of workmen that had come 
from the Mound-builders' villages had labored 
at this task for a week, and they found that in 
that time sufficient stone had been hewn to 
build the wall from base to summit. Each 



114 



BEHEMOTH. 



block was more than twelve feet square, and 
through its centre was drilled a hole of some 
six inches diameter, in which to insert bars of 
metal, to bind them more firmly together. 

As soon as they were prepared to commence 
the erection of the wall, which was the most 
critical part of their labors, four or five separate 
bands of musicians were stationed at the far- 
ther end of the enclosure, and near to Behe- 
moth : for they knew, from Bokulla's report, 
that the Mastodon, mighty and terrible as he 
was, could be soothed by the influence of music, 
adroitly managed. 

The moment the work of heaving the vast 
square blocks one upon the other began, the 
musicians, at a given signal, commenced play- 
ing, and during the progress of the labor, ran 
through all the variety of gentle tunes : so that 
the wall, like that of Amphion, sprang up un- 
der the spell of music. So cunningly did the 
different bands master their instruments, that, 
at three different times, when the Mastodon 
had turned his step toward the gap at which 
the Mound-builders labored, they lured him 
back, and held him spell-bound and motionless. 

The blocks were hoisted to their places by 
cranes, and the utmost silence was observed in 
every movement ; not even a voice was lifted 
to command, but every direction was given 
with the pointed finger. No one moved from 
his station during the hours of toil, but each 
stood on his post and executed his portion of 
the task like a part of the machinery. And yet 
there was no lack of spirit ; every one labored 
as if for his own individual redemption, and 
one who beheld them plying amid the massive 
fragments of granite, silent and busy, might 
have thought that they were some rebellious 
crew of beings brought into the wilderness by 
a genius or necromancer, and there compelled, 
speechless and uncomplaining, to do his bidding. 

They labored in this way for more than a 
month, and at the end of that time, Bokulla 
proclaimed from its summit that the wall was 
completed. At the announcement, the whole 
host of artisans and laborers, and innumerable 
women and children, who had come from the 
villages, sent up a shout that rent the air. Be- 
hemoth heard it, and, listening only for a mo- 
ment, browsed on among the tall grass as if 
regardless of its source and its object. In a 
few days, however, after the music had ceased 
its gentle influence, and the supply of pastur- 
age began to be less luxuriant, the Mastodon 
made progress toward the old outlet, with the 
determination of seeking food elsewhere. 

He, of course, sought an outlet in vain, and 
found himself standing at the base of an im- 
mense rampart, which shot sheer up two hun- 
dred and fifty feet in air. He surveyed the 
structure, and soon discovered that it was no 
trifling barrier, but a mighty pile of rocks, that 
showed themselves almost as massive and firm 
as the mountains which they bound together. 
At first, Behemoth thought, although it would 
be idle to attempt to shake the whole mass at 



once, that yet the separate parts might be re- 
moved block by block. With this purpose he en- 
deavored to force his white tusks between them, 
but it was in vain ; they were knit too firmly 
together to be sundered. At length, the great 
brute was maddened by these fruitless efforts, 
and retreating several hundred rods, he rushed 
against the wall with tremendous strength and 
fury. 

The Mound-builders, who overlooked the 
structure, trembled for its safety, but it stood 
stiff, and the shock caused Behemoth to re- 
coil discomfited, while the earth shook with 
the weight and violence of the motion. Over 
and over again these assaults were repeated, 
always with the same result. Wearied with 
the attempt, the Mastodon desisted, and return- 
ed to feed upon the diminished pasturage, 
which he had before deserted. He had soon 
browsed on it to its very roots, and began to feed 
on the commoner grass and weeds, scarcely pal- 
atable. In a day these had all vanished, and he 
turned to the trees which were here and there 
scattered over the meadow. These he de- 
voured, foliage, limb, and trunk. — In a few 
days they were wholly exhausted, and the en- 
closed plain was reduced to a desert — pasture- 
less, herbless, and treeless. 

The impatience and wrath of Behemoth now 
knew no bounds. He saw no possible mode of 
escape from this dreary and foodless waste. 
Around and around the firm colosseum which 
enclosed him, he rushed, maddened, bellowing, 
and foaming. 

At times, in his fury, he pushed up the al- 
most perpendicular sides of the mountains and 
recoiled, bringing with him shattered fragments 
of rock and large masses of earth, with fearful 
force and swiftness. Around and around he 
again galloped and trampled, shaking the very 
mountains with his ponderous motions, and fill- 
ing their whole circuit with his terrible howl- 
ings and cries. The Mound-builders who stood 
upon the wall, and on different parts of the 
mountains, shrunk back affrighted and awe- 
stricken before the deadly glare of his eye, and 
the fearful and agonizing sound of his voice. 

Day by day he became more furious, and his 
roar assumed a more touching and dreadful 
sharpness. All sustenance was gone from the 
plain; the whole space within his reach fur- 
nished nothing but rocks and earth, for he had 
already drunk the stream dry to its channel. 

The mighty brute was perishing of hunger in 
the centre of his prison. 

His strength was now too far wasted to ad- 
mit of the violent and gigantic efforts which he 
had at first made to escape from the famine- 
stricken enclosure, and he now stalked up and 
down its barren plain, uttering awful and heart- 
rending cries. Some of the Mound-builders 
who heard them, and who saw the agonies and 
sufferings of Behemoth, although he had been 
their most cruel enemy, could not refrain from 
tears. So universal is humanity in its scope, 
that it can feel for everything that has life. 



BEHEMOTH. 



115 



Howling and stalking like a shadow, moment- 
ly diminishing, he walked to and fro in this 
way for many days. Hunger hourly extended 
its mastery through his immense frame. At 
about midday in the third week of his impris- 
onment, he cast his eye upon the cavernous 
and dusty opening through which the river 
that watered the plain had been accustomed 
to find its way. It was broad and open and of 
considerable height. Into this Behemoth now 
turned his steps. Its mouth was larger than the 
inner passage, for time and tempest had worn 
away the rocks which once guarded it. 

As he advanced it diminished, and ere his 
whole bulk had entered the channel, it became 
so narrow and confined that he was forced to 
sink on his knees, in order to make further prog- 
ress. This labor soon proved vexatious and 
toilsome, and the Mastodon, willing to force 
a way where one was not to be found, or to 
perish in the endeavour, raised himself slowly 
toward an upright position. 

The remnant of his strength proved to be 
fearful, for, as his broad shoulders pressed upon 
the rocks above him, the incumbent mountain 
trembled, and when he had attained his full sta- 
ture by a last powerful effort, the impending 
rocks rolled back and forth, and fell with a re- 
sounding crash and in great fragments to the 
earth. The whole cone of the mountain had 
been loosened from its base, and, leaning for a 
moment, like a lurid cloud in midair, fell into 
the plain with terrible ruin, bearing down a 
whole forest of trees and the earth in which 
they had taken root. 



Fortunately for Behemoth — unfortunately for 
the object of the Mound-builders — the rocks 
which immediately overhung Behemoth, though 
rent in several places, did not give way, but so 
interlocked and pressed against each other as 
to form a solid arch over his head and leave 
him unharmed amid the ruins. Passage through 
the channel was, however, wholly arrested by 
the large masses of earth that had fallen into 
it, and Behemoth, finding it vain to attempt to 
pass farther onward, withdrew. 

The fatal time drew nearer and nearer. Hun- 
dreds and thousands of the Mound-builders gath- 
ered from every quarter of the empire to look up- 
on the last hour of the mighty creature which lay 
extended, in his whole vast length, in the plain. 
A catastrophe and show like that was not to be 
foregone, for it might never (and so they prayed) 
come again. Death and the Mastodon held a 
fearful encounter in the arena below. Nations 
looked down from the wall and the mountains, 
on the strange and terrible spectacle. 

To and fro the whole famished bulk moved 
with the convulsions, and spasms, and devour- 
ing agonies of hunger. At times the brute 
raised his large countenance toward heaven, 
and howled forth a cry which, it seemed, might 
bring down the gods to his succor. 

On the fortieth day Behemoth died, and left 
his huge bones extended on the plain, like the 
wreck of some mighty ship, stranded there by a 
deluge, to moulder, century after century, to be 
scattered through a continent by a later con- 
vulsion, and, finally, to become the wonder of 
the present time ! 



THE END OF BEHEMOTH. 



THE POLITICIANS: 



A COMEDY 



IN FIVE ACTS. 



THE POLITICIANS. 



PREFACE. 

It scarcely befits the author of a comedy to meet 
his readers with a rueful visage, and to give them 
a prologue seasoned with as many hardships as 
there are pebbles in a pudding served at a country 
inn. 

Were this his privilege, the present entertainer 
might spread one of the most delicate and delicious 
banquets of mishap that it has ever been the dolor- 
ous fortune of the reader to sit down to. First, we 
should have a little railing at the managers, the 
sworn foes to dramatic writers, who lie in wait, as 
is well known, behind the door of the green room, 
to knock the poor gentleman's brains out, without 
paying, as gentlemen should, for their sport. It 
would be impossible in this place too, to pass over 
a dissertation on the impertinence of producing, at 
an American theatre, a constant succession of 
farces with Sir Harry Humdrum, my Lord Noddy, 
and my Lady Highdiddlediddle, attended by flying 
squads of waiters in livery and coachmen in top- 
boots — to the entire exclusion of a single scene or 
personage that has the recommendation of fitness, 
either in respect to time, place, or audience. In 
fact, the author might safely dilate on the manifest 
injustice of not allowing a solitary devil of a poor 
republican to show his visnomy on the stage more 
than once in a quarter, and then, only with an Eng- 
lish playwright at his back. That the Americans 
are a stolid, melancholy, long-visaged people, is 

Suite evident from this — that they have not, up to 
lis moment, furnished, as far as the present au- 
thor is advised, material for the concoction of a 
single genuine and legitimate comedy. 

The citizen who is employed in the manufacture 
of constables and aldermen by the year, governors 
bi-yearly, and presidents quadrennially, may be 
readily supposed to be too much engaged in this 
weighty business to find time for the contrivance 
of idle plays and poems ; although he may be all 
the while furnishing very admirable material to 
such lookers-on as have leisure for sketching his 
worship in his hour of bustle and glory. 

Besides this, a word should be said on the evi- 
dent absurdity, on the part of our legislature, of 
enacting a law by which remuneration should be 
secured to such idle persons as spend their time in 
the writing of plays The builder of a cotton um- 
brella, or the creator of a four-hooped tub, are ob- 
jects sufficiently dignified for the regards of a sen- 
ator or representative, because the one may secure 
the said senator or representative a dry sconce in 
a shower, and the other a supply of jerked beef in 
an emergency : — but what claim, we beseech you, 
has a vagabond dramatist, who works in feelings, 
affections, mirths, and melancholies, upon these 
pluvious and hungry legislators? — They would as 
soon think of incorporating a guild of eagles to 
gaze upon the sun, as of bestowing a charter to 
think and write, upon the fraternity of dramatic 



authors. Tariffs and immunities were invented 
by some fool of a man of genius for the benefit of 
clowns and calico-mongers, and not for his own 
kindred. To the red-coated invader of his coun- 
try, the heroic statesman presents a gloomy-look- 
ing gun, and says, " One step — and you are a dead 
man !'' Such is his respect for the land he lives 
in. To the foreign merchant, the prudent states- 
man extends a formidable, codified document, and 
exclaims, " Come this side of high-water mark, 
and it shall cost you twenty per cent, ad valorem /" 

Such is his affection for the native-born gentle- 
man who clothes his back in homespun. To the 
invading grain-dealer, the voracious statesman sends 
a furious inspector to say, " None of your musty 
wheat enters this market — we pray you mercy !'' 
Such is his reverence for the home-constructed 
flour-mill that satisfies his belly. Thrice-honored 
Lycurgus — His back, his belly, and his birthplace, 
he nobly provides for ; but his mind, the immortal, 
far-seeing, capacious soul — that's sheer stuff, im- 
palpable, intangible, and invisible — and if it can't 
take care of itself, a week, feeble, rickety intel- 
lect it must be. A law to protect the mind from 
foreign corruptions, to secure to the home born 
offspring of that mind rights of remuneration and 
inheritance .'—The sagacious and enlightened M. C. 
scorns such props and protections, as laws and en- 
actments for the efforts of his own noble intellect. 
His speeches are spread over the face of the coun- 
try in extra Globes and Intelligencers, and he re- 
ceives eight dollars per diem : so what cares he for 
remuneration and copyright ! Is not this sound, 
wholesome, and safe logic for a politician? For a 
politician, it is. — 

Having thus suggested what, in a certain mood, 
he might have said, the author can not part from 
the reader without giving utterance to a few pres- 
ent feelings of a somewhat deeper cast. 

In the present condition of things, a manager 
looks upon a manuscript American play, with, I 
imagine, about the same favor as he would peruse 
the wash-book of one of his supernumeraries, and 
woidd as soon think, under ordinary circumstances, 
of putting the last year's almanac into action, with 
the twelve signs of the zodiac as dramatis persona 
(which would in fact make a very pretty spec- 
tacle), as of producing a comedy by a dramatic, 
writer born this side of Cape Lookout. An 
American dramatist is at once confronted and 
frowned back by a cheap array of sturdy strangers, 
in the guise of farce, burlesque, and comedy, from 
abroad, that have usurped exclusive authority even 
in his chosen places ot amusement. A spirit alien 
to anything that may be found in his bomebom 
compositions, starts up and warns him from the 
spot, with maledictions on the unlucky head that 
lias ventured to conceive scenes of native humor, 
or to delineate Five Acts of the life which his sim- 
ple-witted countrymen are content to live. 

The author of the following work, in the spirit 



120 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act I. 



of a liberal self-reliance, has at all times entertain- 
ed the belief that America contains within itself 
material quite adequate for any class of literary- 
productions which might be demanded by the pub- 
lic taste. Auspicious nature has, in this land, de- 
nied us no product that is necessary to sustain, 
cheer, and embellish human life : her foundations 
here are broad, and deeply set, and her airy sum- 
mits are gilded with the lighter graces and orna- 
ments of natural architecture. Rolling rivers, 
green dark woods, boundless meadows, and majes- 
tic peaks, labor together to complete the beauty 
and nobleness of its outward aspect. Within the 
mind of man there is, there must be, unless human- 
ity is false to its trust, something that replies to 
these. Some spirit of beauty and truth must haunt 
us in our walks through scenes like these, and 
awaken the soul to action and utterance not un- 
worthy, at least, of its great inspiration. This is 
the divine origin, the Delian birthplace of poetic 
thought, and the poetic progeny can not fail to at- 
tain its true growth, if the atmosphere it is allowed 
to breathe be not chilled or rendered impure by an 
ungenial or unhealthy national taste. From this 
grand external world, co-operating with and in- 
spiring an equally grand and elevated human spirit, 
must spring the loftier creations of dramatic- art. 
— From another phase of things, the crowded life 
of cities, the customs, habitudes, and actions of 
men dwelling in contact, or falling off into peculiar 
and individual modes of conduct, amalgamated to- 
gether into a close but motley society, with reli- 
gions, trades, politics, professions, and pursuits, 
shooting athwart the whole living mass, and form- 
ing a web infinitely diversified ; from this wonder- 
ful world of life and opinion, must grow the genial 
and brilliant representative of life and opinion, 
Comedy itself. 

Comedy, it is true, requires something of cos- 
tume, something of age and reverence to be laughed 
at, some settled and canonized absurdities to mock, 
in order to accomplish a portion of its labor. But, 
rooted and fixed in the very elements of human 
nature, are to be found the materials with which 
genuine comic genius seeks to deal ; making use. 
however, of external aids of face, figure, dress, and 
action, as the exponents and betrayers of the spirit 
of folly or humor that lurks within. To say that 
there are no proper materials for comedy in our 
country and among ourselves, is to assert that so 
great a revolution has been wrought in human na- 
ture, that it has ceased to be itself. 

In truth, with high and generous qualities which 
have carried us nobly through all past struggles of 
action, we have proved ourselves, I fear, greatly 
wanting in lofty and manly self-dependence, in all 
that relates to the nobler intellectual duties. A res- 
olution to repudiate, without respect to foreign 
authority, whatever is really hostile to the true na- 
tional spirit, and to give a welcome to whatever 
embodies or appeals to it (I mean in no false or 
grovelling sense), would go far toward achieving 
many of the benefits proposed by legislation and 
restriction. If we are but true to ourselves, no 
law, no state of things, can be false to us. We are 
first traitors to ourselves, and the law, as a matter 
of course, follows us as a deserter. We establish 
a league of disastrous amity with folly and injus- 
tice, and we soon find the camp in which we have 
taken shelter, though seemingly our country, a 
place in truth of alien and unhappy servitude. Let 
us have free thoughts and home thoughts, or let us 
cease to live ! 

It only remains for the author to dismiss the 
reader to the perusal of the following work — he 



could have hoped with a more cheerful and less 
earnest welcome, but the full heart will have its 
way — with the declaration, that it will be a life- 
long pleasure to him, if this humble dramatic at- 
tempt shall furnish the least countenance to the 
cause of a true National Literature ! 
New York, July, 1840. 



CHARACTERS. 

Brisk — Candidate for Alderman. 

Crowder. 

Gudgeon — The rival Candidate. 

Botch. 

Glib. 

Old Crumb. 

Blanding. 

Bill Baffin. 

Tom Lug. 

Joe Surge. 



Mrs. Gudgeon. 
Kate Brisk. 
Citizens and others. 



Scene — New York. 



ACT I. 

SCENE I. 

The open street. 
Enter Brisk and Crowder. 



Now for a capital stroke of policy, Crowder — 
we must get the use of the church bell. 



crowder. 



The very thought I had ; we must be of the 
me sect of thinkers : — the very thought. 



same 



Yes, you can look through the thing. Many 
of the more quiet voters, being accustomed to 
its Sunday summons, would be brought out and 
would readily aid our ticket, if they understood 
the steeple, for the time, to be in the hands of 
our party. You see ? 

CROWDER. 

Exactly so ; and, with a banner displayed and 
our ticket spread on the weathercock, they 
could not fail to comprehend our views at a 
glance. 



Particularly as the weathercock's a silver- 
side, with a gold ball in its mouth ! But you 



Scene I.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



121 



mentioned the porter-houses at the upper end 
of the ward ? 

CROWDER. 

You must make a tour of them immediately. 
The best arrangement will be to brandy with 
those in Scammel street, and take your supper 
of cutlets and pale ale at Works's with his 
boarders — who, you know, are chiefly retired 
ragamuffins, disbanded street-sweepers, and 
almshouse candidates generally; a powerful 
class at the poll. 



If that must be done, couldn't you get Tom 
Lug out of the way while I'm there ? Pah ! 
the thought of him makes me sick ; a double- 
distilled scamp. 

CROWDER. 

With great influence, however, greater than 
the best citizen we have. I would not insure 
your election if Mr. Lug's feelings are ruffled 
in the slightest. 



I must digest him then, with the coarse 
steaks, as if they were both as savory as grilled 
woodcocks — that's all. I only ask Heaven for 
a dry night, for he eomes staggering in from a 
shower, with his drippings, soaked through and 
steaming like a swamp. 

CROWDER. 

But there are others whom you must know, 
and take by the hand, or they'll call you an 
aristocrat. 



Oh ! I must be spared that title. They may 
name me toad, snake, dog, monkey — but not 
aristocrat. If the popular nose snuff an aristo- 
crat nine miles off, its delicacy is offended, and 
it veers instantly the other way — to catch the 
odor, more grateful to its organ, of gentle loaf- 
erism. Who are your other vagabonds ? 

CROWDER. 

There's a short man with a large mouth and 
a scar on his cheek. 



That's Joe Surge, by the token ; as rough a 
Christian as ever came into the world, and 
whose character is as offensive as Tom Lug's 
person. 

CROWDER. 

J But Joe carries a whole block with him, be- 
sides his river influence among the hard-drink- 
ing fishermen and ship-joiners. 



Well, we must be charitable in our construc- 
tions ; that gives me a different opinion of the 



man — there are worse fellows than Joe Surge, 
I am satisfied. How about the revolutionary 
veteran ? that's capital too good to be wasted. 



CROWDER. 

He deposites the first vote on our side, and 
we think of bandaging one of his legs and 
placing a patch over his eye, to make the spec- 
tacle more imposing. 

BRISK. 

If we could fix it to have his vote challenged 
by the other party it would tell amazingly in 
our favor, and we would get out a placard at 
once — " Disgraceful ! an old soldier dishon- 
ored !" and so forth. 

CROWDER. 

It would afford a good opportunity to call 
our opponents ruffians, libellers, and miscre- 
ants — which should not be lost. 



Couldn't we attach two or three cases of su- 
icide to their neglect to clear the river ? where- 
by, for example, many are prematurely smoth- 
ered in the mud, that might otherwise have 
been saved by a drag-net ! 

CROWDER. 

This would hardly do, simply, because no 
such case of devotion to water has occurred 
within the memory of man; but we might 
plausibly charge them with the death of the 
watchman that was moonstruck the other night, 
sleeping on Gudgeon's stoop. If Gudgeon had 
exercised ordinary benevolence and taken him 
in, in the early part of the evening, and kept 
him by the warm fire, and nourished him with 
hot toddy, it couldn't have happened — that ev- 
ery one must see. 



Excellent — very excellent — but recollect, we 
must follow them up with charge on charge, 
accusation on accusation, till they are stunned 
like cattle, and drop astonished to the ground. 
You will be at my house in an hour, and exam- 
ine my dress, to see if it's sufficiently rusty and 
plebeian to make me presentable at this court 
of loafers at Works's. [Retiring. 

And, I say, Crowder, if you have a coat out 
at the elbow a little, bring it around ; my worst, 
I am afraid, is a month or so too much this side 
of shabbiness to be popular. [Returns. 

Bring your iron snuff-box, too, filled with 
Lorillard, and, hark you again, I must borrow 
that catskin cap of yours, that's moth-eaten — 
meantime, I'll let my beard grow. [Exit Brisk. 

Enter Glib. 

GLIB. 

Well, Crowder, we are going to try another 
wrestling match with you, and if you achieve 
a fall I hope there will not be an earthquake. 






122 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act I. 



CROWDER. 

Oh, we promise there shall be no such thing 
provided you will pledge yourself to raise no 
hurricane harangues during the election ; nor 
to strike down our tallest men with your tor- 
nadoes of speech and tempests of windy decla- 
mation. No noise, no corruption — that's our 
motto. 



Sly, deep, and dangerous, like a wily river ; 
that is the way you undermine what you wish 
to overthrow. 

CROWDER. 

You think that we manage it so, do you ? we 
that are behind the scenes and in the secrets. 



You behind the scenes ! you in the secrets ! 
Why, Crowder, you are one of those fellows, in 
every party, who are allowed to make a noise 
in proportion to their real want of confidence 
and information ; in the same way as poor Bill 
Baffin, the stevedore, thumps and whistles and 
plies his mallet on the outside of the ship on 
the stocks, without getting so much as a peep 
in at the cabin-window. 

CROWDER. 

We are not hoodwinked so easily, my kind 
Gudgeonite ! We don't allow ourselves to be 
mystified like your money-ridden citizens. 



Oh no, you prefer to be mystified more after 
the manner of a cartman's horse, with his head 
in a feed-bag, who, if he can get a sufficiency 
of oats, doesn't mind how much he's in the dark. 

CROWDER. 

Darkness and light are the same to us, if we 
can but serve the interests of the people, and 
protect them from the fangs of knaves and in- 
triguers. We could pass our lives in dens, 
dungeons, yea, even in stalls and stables. 



With well-filled mangers and perpetual drip- 
pings from the public reservoir, to keep you in 
mind of your dear friends — the people ! Roast 
beef is the altar on which you swear to sustain 
that cause ; and, at whatever sacrifice of bread 
and beer, you will uphold it — while the sup- 
plies last ! Eh ! 

CROWDER. 

Glib, you loathe a poor man — I know you do 
— as if he were a monster. We love paupers 
— we have an affection for them, and mean to 
establish the city government on a pauper ba- 
sis, as solid as the graywacke foundations of 
the island, for it is our honest belief that the deep- 
er you go in the scale of society, the richer 
grows the soil. 



And you poor gentlemen in office are the hus- 
bandmen that cultivate it ; the tillers of this 
arable land of salary, perquisite and plunder. 



CROWDER. 

Sir, I'd have you know, with us no man's in- 
tegrity is tampered with. 

GLIB. 

Who ever dreamed such an absurdity ? You 
disdain a resort to such petty meanness — and, 
what with dinners, and contracts at high rates, 
and a privilege to dip fifty per cent, deep into 
the public pocket, a worthy man's virtue is no 
more exposed with you, than a sea-captain's 
wife whose husband has gone the Canton voy- 
age. 

CROWDER. 

Mr. Glib, I must leave you — you are grow- 
ing offensive. We will finish this discussion 
at the polls. [Exit crowder. 



Ha ! ha ! upon my soul i forgot that his own 
aunt had been tempted in this way, and that 
our little alderman would-be, Mr. Brisk, was 
the supposed serpent in the garden. Hereafter 
I must avoid such subjects — for to make virtue 
a topic with a professed politician is sure to 
give offence ; and if one of these fellows gets 
by chance among the saints in the next world, 
he will be as much out of place as a painter in 
a mob. 



SCENE II. 

A room in Gudgeon's house. 

GUDGEON. 

What a glorious thing it is to be a candidate 
for alderman ! One wakes up in the morning, 
and the first thing he hears is some little poli- 
tician under his window, shouting, hurrah for 
Gudgeon ! and the young rascal, in his enthu- 
siasm, throws his cap so high, the shadow in 
the dressing-glass almost makes me cut my- 
self. Every spile becomes a speaker of his 
praises ; every shutter swings open with a proc- 
lamation of his virtues ; and there's not a dead 
wall in the ward that does not announce his 
glory in the largest capitals — nor a dumb hogs- 
head that is not vocal in approval of his nomi- 
nation. I shall have another seal put to the 
bunch at the end of my watch-chain, that's flat, 
and I think I will have my calves padded. 
Robert Gudgeon, Esquire, Alderman ! I'll get 
me a stamp cut, with a flock of goslings in the 
centre, to show that I was reared in the coun- 
try and am not ashamed of my origin ; and with 
this I'll mark all the corporation documents I 
can lay hold of! 



Scene II.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



123 



Enter Botch. 

botch. 
Have you heard this rumor, sir ? 

GUDGEON. 

What rumor, for Heaven's sake ? They 
haven't bought up all the large flags in the 
ward? 



No, sir. 



GUDGEON. 



Have they got in a new barrel of beer ? or 
hired Blaster, the popular trumpeter ? I spoke 
to him myself last night. They haven't en- 
gaged Murphy's two starved horses, that always 
operate so on the popular sympathies and bring 
up so many voters ? 

botch. 

None of these, sir ! 

GUDGEON. 

What then, Botch ? Be quick — what then ? 

BOTCH. 

Why, sir, the Brisk party is going to use the 
belfry of the church to distribute tickets from, 
and they intend to employ the sexton to read 
prayers every morning of the election from the 
small window in the steeple. 

GUDGEON. 

This must be counteracted : it will have an 
overwhelming effect. We shall have the whole 
religious community moving against us in pla- 
toons, pew by pew ! 



Something must be done, sir ; I see clearly 
something must be done. What shall it be, 
sir? 

GUDGEON. 

Yes ; something must be done. 



Certainly — something must be done. 



What then, in the name of Heaven, shall it 
be ? — Couldn't we get Glib to climb the steeple 
above the window and deliver an harangue ? 
It might do away with the evil influence of the 
proceedings below, and give us a tremendous 
ascendency at once. 



I doubt whether Mr. Glib would undertake 
it, even if he could snatch a notary's commis- 
sion from the weathercock, as the chances of 
being made a martyr of by stoning would be 
considerable. 



Can't you think of anything else, then, Botch ? 

BOTCH. 

Why, yes, sir — a little suggestion strikes me. 
How would it do, if you were to be seen walk- 
ing down the street by the poll, between two 
men drunk ? 

GUDGEON. 

Arm-in-arm with two drunkards ! What do 
you propose to gain by that ? 



The finest series of popular effects ever pro- 
duced. See, sir, how it operates ! You in your 
new blue coat, sir, with bright buttons, clean 
ruffles, and well-polished boots — looking as 
handsome as Adam the day he was born — 
march along, with Adze the tippling cooper 
hanging on one arm, and Ike Luff, for instance, 
pulling at the other, and pitching about like a 
scow straining at her moorings. Everybody's 
attention is immediately directed to you. 
" Gudgeon is friendly to tavern-license — we'll 
vote for him," says a dealer in Hollands, " ob- 
vious from his respect for our customers." 



That fixes the tavern-keepers and the tip- 
plers ; very well. 



" What a big-souled man Gudgeon is !" says 
a tailor. " He'll need a new coat every other 
week, when he's made alderman — He knows 
how to use a coat," as Ike Luff wipes his 
mouth on your shoulder. 

GUDGEON. 

That gives us the tailors and their journey- 
men, I suppose, and might have its effect with 
the cloth-dealers. 



Then the temperance people are yours to a 
man ; for if you put your mouth cunningly to 
the ear of your side-champions, and lift up your 
fingers in a solemn manner, they will suppose 
you are warning the poor wretches to refrain 
from their cups ; while the common mob will 
laugh, taking the whole spectacle for a very 
tolerable joke. 

GUDGEON. 

It shall be done, Botch ; and to aid the effect, 
I'll have some tracts against drunkenness stick- 
ing from my coat pockets, while you can have 
a few large handbills, setting forth that I am 
in favor of retail liquor shops, posted against 
the opposite fence. 

BOTCH. 

In favor of retail liquor shops and the new 
water works ? 



124 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act I. 



GUDGEON. 

No, not the new water works — yon had bet- 
ter put that in a separate handbill by itself. 
[Exeunt severally. 

SCENE HI. 

An ante-chamber at Blanding'* lodgings, 

OLD CRUMB. 

Somehow this young man has touched me 
strangely. Ever since I heard him play those 
plaintive tunes, my heart has been with him : 
he is poor — a mere flute-player at the theatre 
— but I love him, for he reminds me of my own 
youth and of days long, long gone by. His 
musical and pathetic breath gives me back de- 
licious moments, that are otherwise vanished 
for ever; sweet evenings, tranquil noonday 
hours, and long, long afternoons, when the sun 
set with a light that can never rise again . Child 
and changeling of poverty as he is, he can do 
more for this old wearied soul of mine, than any 
one beneath the degree of my Creator. — I hear 
him now — his door is ajar, and I will listen be- 
fore I enter. 

blanding. {From within.') 

A city life, a city life for me — 

Far, far from the shade of the greenwood tree ! 

The sights and sounds that stir the nimble 

brain 
Beyond the speaking stream — the golden grain. 
The thundering shout of the gathering rout 
When the town goes mad and its wrath is out — 
Has more that fires the true red blood in me 
Than the crash of a forest in every tree. 
The glorious light of the city night 
When the stars are quenched and the lamps 

burn bright — 
Is better far, is better far to me 
Than the pale round moon and all her com- 
pany. 



A lover, and not a word of his mistress in 
twelve lines of poetry ! — I am afraid this is not 
the true lunacy. 

blanding. (From within.) 

Fol-la — my heart — andino — has gently — sa — 
felt— allegro — allegro — sweet Kate — piano — the 
sharp and sure revenge of fate — La-mi-fol-sa. 

CRUMB. 

The fit is coming upon him. 

BLANDING. 

Oh smile upon the gloomy wave 
That bears me to a gloomier grave. 

That goes badly in andante — so-fa-me-fi-so. 

CRUMB. 

Its rising. (Tapping his forehead.) 



BLANDING. 

If sire or shackle bind your hand 
Break, break, oh break the cursed band ! 

CRUMB. 

He suggests elopement, on my word. 

BLANDING. 

And fly — too slow — and fly — allegro — allegro, 
And fly with me. Prestissimo. 

crumb. (Breaking in.) 

Heigh-ho ! how is this, sir — are you trying to 
set a runaway match to music ? 

BLANDING. 

I beg your pardon sir — but — 



You may well do that, and the pardon of 
the whole city council, if you please. Medita- 
ting a rhym'd elopement with Miss Brisk, 
daughter of John Brisk, candidate for alderman 
of the ward ! Why this is an audacious breach 
of ordinance. 

BLANDING. 

I — I — beg to be excused, sir — but her name 
was not mentioned by me ; it was a fancy piece 
that I was preparing for an opera. 

CRUMB. 

Yes, very pretty, and very fanciful, and would 
answer as well as another for an opera — if there 
were such a thing as an opera of real life. 
{Mimics him.) " Oh fate/' " sweet Kate" — 
" your hand," and " break the cursed band." 
I thought you had promised me you would not 
think of marriage, much less marriage with the 
heiress of an alderman, without my consent ; 
and the first news I hear is, that that young 
scapegrace, Blanding, hath a snare set at the 
house of goodwife Gudgeon, for Miss Kate 
Brisk. 

BLANDING. 

To tell the truth, my kind friend, my calcu- 
lations have been thwarted by an impudent, 
meddling, presumptuous hussy, who took the 
liberty to blot out all my resolves and put her 
own handwriting in their place. 



Now I'll warrant you will say this busybody 
was Nature, for we father on her all the chil- 
dren of our fancy, that good-sense, the rugged 
overseer, refuses to provide for. If a lawyer 
cozen a young orphan of his patrimony, people 
never think to lift their hands for a curse upon 
the dark rascal— for it's nature, nature ! If a 
stout young fellow knock down a weak old 
man, and filch his purse and papers, the shrewd 
world exclaims — what could be more natural ? 
Or if a sly young dog, like yourself, play the 



Scene I.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



125 



incendiary with a pretty girl's heart, and set it 
all-a-blaze — oh ! it's nature ; if you have any 
fault to find, blame her. 

ELANDING. 

And if a kind old man takes an undeserving, 
thriftless young knave to his heart, as if he 
were his own child — whose folly is that ? 



Mere whim — mere whim — the world says. 
But I thought you were not to be a rich man, 
that I might take my seat in the pit for this 
many a long year, and always hear you play 
those touching old tunes, which I am sure you 
will never play as well when you become rich. 

BLANDING. 

I shall lose none of my success on that score, 
for not a penny comes with Miss Brisk, unless 
she marries with her father's consent, and that 
never will come to me. 



Well, sir, I consider this a high misdemeanor 
— this falling in love against my will — a serious 
ground of displeasure; but — mark me — you 
shall have them both, the girl and the fortune, 
or I'm an old fool. Now play me " Oh, live 
again, sweet time of youth" — (Sits in an arm- 
chair, and weeps while Blanding plays ;) 

I am an old fool, after all — an old fool ! 

[Exit CRUMB. 

BLANDING. 



Enter Mrs. Gudgeon. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Come, come, children, you have been long 
enough in the orchard — the paradise orchard, 
as I call it. When Robert courted me by the 
well, or the big walnut-tree in the lane, it was 
always " Margery, Margery, you are a Avhile fod- 
dering the turkeys— is the Muscovy gander got 
among them agiu, and troubling you ?" from fa- 
ther's house. Or it would be, " Where are 
you ? Robert — Rob — ert, I wish you'd pen that 
ewe, or stop that cackling hen !" or something 
of that sort from the stone house across the 
road, where Mr. Gudgeon's grandfather lived — 
(he was a sad old wag !) and then we'd flutter ! 
— Come, come, your hourglass is fairly out, and 
I'm looking for Mr. Gudgeon home from the 
meeting every minute. But what's that you 
were saying about sheltering your young ? 
Your pin-feathers grow fast ! 

BLANDING. 

Not our own progeny, Mrs. Gudgeon — it 
was of young brown-thrashers, and not young 
Charleses or Kates. Our fancies are not quite 
so rapid travellers, are they, Kate ? 

KATE. 

But, Blanding, there is no beauty and fresh- 
ness in a city, I am sure, like that of the 
branching tree and the cloudless air — the spot- 
ted flower, and the sweet, silent nook, where 
the mower sits at noontide, belong not to the 
angry Babel that you love. What is there in 
a dull city to please the eye, brighten the fan- 
cy, or mend the heart ? 



MRS. GUDGEON. 



God bless the kind old man ! His promise is 
as sure of ripening into performance (in this 
case I know not how) as the dawn of day into 
a true and glorious meridian. Of all the thou- 
sands that have heard me play, he is the single 
one in whom music, as far as I can learn, has 

tCgSfand EWiSL^ffi ST : =H '»e'hea"n 
thou art mine, for in this good man's promise I 
am no infidel. [Exit. 



Ah ! I see, you are disputing the old question, 
whether you shall live in town or out of town ; 
and, if you'll allow me to answer, Miss Kate, 
there's the parson and the moral reform — to 



END OF ACT 



ACT II. 
SCENE I. 

A room in Gudgeon's house. 
Kate Brisk and Blanding. 



You say you love the city, and would always 
live within its bounds ? 

BLANDING. 

I do, Kate, as dearly as a brown-thrasher 
loves the green tree that sheltered its young ! 



well, to please the eye; and, as to kindling up 
the fancy, I defy flesh to go beyond a hundred-dol- 
lar Cashmere shawl — in that particular. Be- 
sides, there's the privilege of having the street 
sprinkled twice a-week, that keeps the dust out 
of the parlor ! 

BLANDING. 

Yes, and there are the fops, Mrs. Gudgeon, 
and rogues, sharpers, and money-lenders — all 
the proper children of the city. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

And a very precious family it makes ! 

BLANDING. 

Here I take my seat quietly by the wayside, 
under the shelter of fresh and pleasant thoughts, 
and look forth upon the little, busy, knavish 
world, and see it bustling and harrying and 
fretting itself like a great schoolboy behind his 
time, and filling its huge green satchel with all 



126 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act H. 



kinds of fruitless rubbish, and teasing its heart 
with thoughts of yesterday, to-day, and to-mor- 
row. 

KATE. 

But these thoughts may be had in green 
fields as well as in crowded streets. 

BLANDING. 

They may — but there they come to us only 
like the sound of far-off bells, at intervals j 
here the mighty hum of life continually tolls 
us on to musings and meditations like these. 
Here every man's face is the frontispiece to a 
history. 

KATE. 

Yes, and to a very dull one, often. 

BLANDING. 

The features I speak of need no interpreter, 
but are of themselves loud as an organ, in 
expounding their own significance or insignifi- 
cance, as it may happen. There is, for example 
Botch, Mr. Gudgeon's assistant in the present 
election — a character as impossible, in the coun- 
try, as a three-story house or a roaring dema- 
gogue. He must have a hand in everything that 
happens in the city. If a murder occurs, he runs 
and takes minutes for his own satisfaction ; he 
writes paragraphs for the newspapers, about 
street-nuisances, the navy-yard, and city finan- 
ces ; and signs the " Old Tar," " Argus," and 
" One that knows." If he hears a call to organize 
a new party, he is on the spot to act as secretary. 
In a word, he's everywhere and everything, and 
yet he remains the same credulous little crea- 
ture that the Lord made him at first — in spite 
of his scribblings, juntos, and secretaryships. 



And I think he is the person that got an in- 
nocent butcher hanged, by introducing at court 
a memorandum which he had taken from the 
hat of the accused, at the time of the fray, of a 
method of slaughtering a bullock, instead of 
his proper notes of the homicide. 

BLANDING. 

Although he was a bosom-friend of the pris- 
oner, and had boasted out of doors he could 
and would save his life with a word, as easily 
as hem-stitch a navy-jacket ! 

KATE. 

That's a city character, and no other place 
on the earth could confuse a man's brains to 
such a pass as to have his friend hanged, by 
way of saving his life. 

BLANDING. 

Then we have politicians quarrelling who 
shall be crowned with most dust and honor ; 
packet-captains contending which shall run the 



closest chance of shipwreck, that he may soon- 
est make a jeweller's shop of his parlor with 
presentation-pitchers, mugs, and goblets ; men, 
monkeys, and monsters, sent as representatives 
from the four quarters of the globe; a sn- g 
berth in a belfry, with the power to enjoy all 
these, makes an illustrated book of life, where 
joy and sorrow, power, pomp, death, and 
laughter, pass us in a perpetual pageant. Oh ! 
how dull — how tomb-like dull, are your fields 
and turnpikes, compared with this ! — dull, Kate, 
as the very inhabitants themselves, that talk 
from October to August of the last camp-meet- 
ing or the next new-moon. 



Well, Blanding, you are the better pleader, 
and all I can say is, that your cause requiies 
your ingenuity, but the country still has charms, 
honest hearts, cheerful faces, simple manners. 

BLANDING. 

Faces uniform as sheep, and one everlasting 
pair of linsey-woolsey pantaloons. The man- 
ners are simple enough, for there the three acts 
of man's life are, to cut hay in summer, fodder 
his cattle in winter, and attend a town-meeting 
in spring, to elect overseers of the poor. The 
poor ! — they are all poor in spirit, if not in 
pocket, and deserve nothing better to look out 
upon than one huge, green page, with a half- 
dozen dreary-looking trees, by way of inter- 
jections ! 

MKS. GUDGEON. 

There, go — go, children — I hear Mr. Gud- 
geon's hem down the street ; I'm sure it's his, 
for he has a hem of his own, like our preacher. 
Kate, this way — Mr. Blanding, that, if you 
please, for you mustn't be seen in the street 
any nearer together than the two sides of a pond, 
or my character's ruined, and Mr. Gudgeon 
would, as like as not, lose his election. 

[Exeunt, blanding and kate, severally. 

Enter Mr. Gudgeon. 

gudgeon. 

Well — well — I am satisfied, this is certainly 
the proudest hour of my life. 

MBS. GUDGEON. 

What now ! what now ! 



You may well ask what now — it will aston- 
ish you, woman. Go up stairs and get your 
best cap on, and I'll tell you. 

[Mrs. Gudgeon retires and returns. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Well, now, Mr. Gudgeon, (I'm afraid to call 
him Robert, he looks so grand — aside,) don't 
overwhelm a body. 



Scene I.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



121 



GUDGEON. 

No — I'll not overwhelm you, but I'll aston- 
ish you furiously. — they have appointed a com- 
mittee to have my portrait taken ! 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Your own portrait ? 

GUDGEON. 

Yes, my own portrait, of my individual self— 
.Robert Gudgeon. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

And what's to be done with it ? 

GUDGEON. 

What do you suppose is to be done with it — 
give it to you for a fire-screen, or use it to wrap 
cheese in ? Eh ! No, it goes into the great 
hall, where we hold our meetings, and it only 
costs me fifty dollars. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Dog-cheap — but do you pay for it yourself? 



Not altogether — but I headed the subscrip- 
tion-list in gallant style, and they were all so 
well-pleased with my promptness, they laughed 
outright with joy. That must be a thorn in Brisk's 
side. How do you think the election's going now, 
Mag ? Am I safe, do you think — quite safe — 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

I hope so — I truly hope so ; and, to make a 
short matter of it, I have felt a sort of present- 
iment that it must be. 

GUDGEON. 

And so have I. Some great event is clearly 
at hand. We have had a meteor the other 
night, that whizzed round the sky like a large 
Catherine-wheel — then there has been a school 
of sixty whale cast ashore off Barnegat — and 
the rain-king, only last week, caught a storm 
on a lightning-rod, and held it there two days, 
notwithstanding the entreaties of the neighbor- 
ing county that was suffering sorely under a 
drought. — What do these things mean ? what 
do they refer to ? The approach of the comet, 
foretold in the Farmer's almanac — or — it may 
be so — (for I recollect the birth of my father's 
five-legged calf, in Danbury, was brought on by 
an early sunrise) — the election of Robert Gud- 
geon as alderman. I think I shall sleep sound 
to-night, unless disturbed by that vexatious 
dream again. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

That dream, if it's the same you told me of, 
i3 lucky. If it comes to you again, encourage 
it — give it welcome, and, in order to provide a 
substantial welcome for it, you had better fin- 
ish the cold turkey and the other half of the 
goose-pie before you retire. [Exeunt. 



SCENE II. 

An apartment in Brisk's house. 

Old Crumb and Brisk. 

old crumb. 

Perhaps the young man is my equal or yours, 
sir! 



My equal ! Sir, he is a paltry flute-player at 
the theatre — a twelve shilling a-week whistler 
and inspirer of dead wood ! 



But he is a man. (In an under-tone.) I will 
strive to restrain myself, although human pa- 
tience is a frail thing. 



A man, not he ; I will warrant, now, though 
I have never seen his person, he is a tall, lank, 
thin-chopped fellow, that hath blown his brains 
out with his flageolet, as effectually as if he had 
applied a pistol to his scull. 

CRUMB. 

You are exceedingly happy in your illustra- 
tions. (Under-tone.) I rise fast — I am already 
at blood-heat. 

BRISK. 

That he goes simpering about like a feeble 
oysterman, sliding out his quavers and crotch- 
ets, and tapping on tables and hat-crowns with 
his fingers by way of rehearsing his next new 
part, and saving the wear and tear of instru- 
ments. 

CRUMB. 

Well, sir ! (Under-tone.) Summer is coming 
upon me swiftly. 



And when he talks to you, he drops his breath 
and sighs, as if it were a pity to rob his dog's- 
pipe, the flute, of so much good inspiration. 
Now of what use can such a fellow make him- 
self as my son-in-law ? Can he control twelve 
votes ? Would a bill-sticker, or even the dis- 
tributor of a quack-doctor's puffs, change his 
mind to please this upstart ? 



Now hear me, sir ! (Under-tone.) 
the torrid zone ; I burn. 

BRISK. 

You show me no consideration : 

CRUMB. 

You deserve none — 

BRISK. 

No equivalent : 



I am in 



128 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act H. 



BRISK. 



condition and warranted kind in harness ! In 
CRtJMB* a word, he has a soul — hecause he is a man ; 

As for that, Fll furnish you forthwith. This you have none, because the cost of keeping is 
abused young gentleman, "then, sir, is an hon- too high in these trying times !— So good-day to 
ester man, in my poor judgment, than your your aldermanship ! {Exit crumb. 

vile office-seeker, who glides about before he 
has been rewarded, from porter-house to porter- 
house, like a collector of tavern-rates ; haunts Well, although I am somewhat astonished — 
barbers' shops, as if he were a wig-block; plants this old "Whirlwind may blow as much as he 
himself on corners and kerbstones, as if he were pleases, but he can not blow me out of my pres- 
fixed there to supply citizens with light at noon- e nt opinion of this fellow, Blanding. Presump- 
day — and at length — tion ! Brazen-faced hardihood ! A paltry mu- 

BRISK sician, without rank, fortune, or title, to lift 

his eyes upon my daughter ! Why, if it were ut- 
tered in the open air at night, it would make 
the very man in the moon, who has outstared 
a thousand generations, blush deep scarlet. 
When he is berthed in an office, the poor My equal ! my superior ! — I am, at least, good 
rascal's heaven, he fattens like a dull young Master Crumb, the proprietor of my own house 
bullock on grass wet with the precious night- an d controller of my daughter's motions ; and 
dew ; rents a whole pew on Sunday ; allows if he crosses the threshold of the one, or gets 
his wife to keep two servants and to wear three- within eyeshot of the other, why he's welcome 
shilling calico. Pah ! the fellow smells odious t o her hand, I'll assure him, and I'll lend him 
of tobacco ! I my ears to make a nice satchel of to carry his 

flute in ! This is disposed of, and now I must 
dress for the supper. [Exit. 



Yes, at length ! What at length ? 



With all this, sir, your Mr. Blanding, I re- 
peat, is not my equal nor a proper suiter for my 
daughter. He is not in the same rank — in the 
same station with me. 



No — no. His station is at the zenith, where 
there is shining virtue, truth, integrity, honor ; 
yours, in the nadir of the earth — the base, dull 
nadir, where knavery, fraud, cozenage, and 
double-dealing abide. He is a zodiac, a living 
zodiac of many manly qualities ; you a mere 
wooden imitation, a hollow mockery of these 
true planets that govern man's life. He has 
not a mercenary particle of earth about him — 



No, for I doubt if he is worth a shilling in the 
world. 



SCENE m. 

The kitchen of Work's hotel. 

A table spread, lights, $c. 

Landlord, Tom Lug, and others. To them 
enters Brisk. 

LANDLORD. 

Gentlemen, here's Mr. Brisk ! 



Where? 
cellency ! 



where ? — Three cheers fee his ex- 



BRISK. 



Ah, Thomas, it does me good to take you by 

the hand, you hearty old fellow — William — 

You, sir, since you have forced me to the James— Surge, are you here, too ? On my soul, 

truth, if coach-wheels were but spoked with it's as fine for the eye as a visit to the museum, 

gold, would be an active running-footman all to see so many honest friends gathered togeth- 

your life, for the sake of enjoying the glitter. er. (Aside)— Kangaroos, monkeys, and odor- 

! ous mummies are as pleasant ! 



A noble object, sir, in my view, a coach with 
pure golden wheels ; at mid-day it could be seen 
a league off. 



How's Mrs. Brisk ? 



Dead these ten years, Tom. 



Beg your pardon — then she's as dead as old 



He, sir, looks upon nature and society with 
the eye of truth and fancy — gathering out of 
them the true purposes of life, and food to feed 

those purposes ; you, my most sagacious and Adam himself; but how's your daughter ? 
supple sir, make a traffic in the credulity of the bri«k 

world, set your follies out for sale, call about 

you gaping chapmen, who are in the market : Well, I thank you, Thomas. How is your 
for a ranting demagogue, in sound mouthing family, Mr. Surge ? 



Scene III.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



129 



surge. (Laughing.) 

Your hcior's jokin' with me now — now con- 
fess your honor — playing the crab, eh ! — com- 
in' the Wind eel over us ? — How's*your family ? 
now that's too good ! 

BRISK. 

Well, how is your family ? 

LANDLORD. 

You must excuse him from answering that 
question — any other, I have no doubt, he would 
with pleasure — but (whispers) he's been in the 
penitentiary ever since he was of marriageable 
age. 



Oh ! (Aside) — I thought as much ; it's a dis- 
grace to be born in the same century and on 
the same continent with such a fellow. He is 
enough to infect an entire hemisphere, like the 
plague. 

LANDLORD. 

Mr. Brisk, will you be good enough to take 
the head of the table, with the respects of the 
company ? 



No — no — you must excuse me, if you will ; 
let one of these worthy gentlemen preside, if 
you please. (Aside) — And save me from neigh- 
borhood to Mr. Surge. 

LANDLORD. 

Well, Tom Lug, come this way. Here, put 
your face between these two bottles of porter, 
and keep your eye steadily on the water-cresses, 
and you may hold sober till we are through. 

[They take their places at the table.] 



Alderman, what do you think of this alis- 
tockincy that's agin us at the Polls ?— They 
say I aint fit to be governor of the state, be- 
cause I'm out at elbows, and have had a little 
quarrel with the haberdasher and his second 
cousin, the hosier. Haven't I seen figureheads 
of Romans and other gentlemen in the bows of 
as big ships as ever floated out of this port ? 
and wasn't they naked, excepting a little roll 
of linen over their breasts, and a sprig of pop- 
lar in their hand ? 



You i«ot fit for governor ! that's a pretty 
joke. You are fit for anything. (Aside) — 
Among others, from a peculiar conformation of 
neck, for the gallows. — The man that says a 
pauper-^yea, a vagabond, Tom — is not suit- 
able to hold the highest dignities in the gift of 
the people, is a traitor and a scoundrel. 

TOM LUG. 

That's a noble sentiment — a high-minded 
I 



sentiment. Let's have his health — Gem'men, 
the health of our next alderman, Mr. John 
Brisk. Drunk standing, boys. {They drink it. 

brisk. (Rising.) 

In return, gentlemen, for this flattering toast, 
let me offer you, " The ragamuffins and pau- 
pers of the ward : they conceal more genuine 
honor and virtue beneath their rags, than King 
Solomon in his Sunday clothes, or a Fourth -of- 
July orator in his new-bought ruffle and wrist- 
bands !" 

surge. (Maudlin drunk.) 

They call me names, alderman — they abuse 
poor Joe Surge — and one of the Gudgeon gen- 
try called me a tadpole. [Weeps. 

BRISK. 

Why did he call you tadpole, Joseph ? 

SURGE. 

Because — because — your honor, I haven't 
had — a clean shirt on these three year. Tad 
poles lives in mud, your honor knows. 

BRISK. 

And what do they call you, Tom ? 

TOM LUG. 

Why, your honor, one of the canvassers re- 
turns me as a resident turkle ! 



How is that ? 

TOM LUG. 

'Cause I never comes out of this old cordu- 
roy jacket of mine. 

BRISK. 

What name have these worthy gentlemen ? 
I suppose you are all christened. 

TOM LUG. 

These are the men in the moon, because 
they always have dirty faces. — Now, alderman, 
give us a song for answering all these ques- 
tions. 



One more — Has your worthy landlord no 
title ? 

cook. (Speaks up.) 

Yes, an it please Alderman Brisk, your honor 
— we call him the chimbly-swallow, for he's 
for everlasting poking about the hearth and 
smelling the smoke and the dishes. 

TOM LUG 

Now for the song ! 

ALL. 

Yes, now for the song ! 



130 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act III. 



BRISK. 

How many stevedores and wharfingers do 
you know, Tom ? 



Let me see, there's Zeke Oakum, tarpaulin 
Tom— two ; Bill Baffin ; but poor Bill's deadly 
sick — I doubt whether he'll get up to vote ; say 
a score and a half. But give us the song, if 
you please. (Aside) — Hark'e, my boys, if he 
doesn't come down with his song, we'll pitch 
our votes on the other side — that's all. 

brisk. (Aside.) 

I hear that, and although I would as lief sing 
in a musty fish-keg, I must try it. 

The Song. 

Were mine a head as high as is the highest 
steeple, 
A tongue as loud as its far-sounding bell, 
The one I would raise to the sky for the peo- 
ple — 
The other would echo of tyrants the knell ! 
(Aside) — Oh, wouldn't 1 raise a devil of a yell ! 

Were my arm but as long as the great Missis- 
sippi, 
My bosom as broad as the Prairie-du-Chien, 
With the one, for their sake, how, ye tyrants ! 
I'd whip ye, 
And breast with the other your torrents of 
spleen ! 
(Aside) — Blast my eyes ! Jack Brisk, if I know 
what you mean ! 

If my legs were as long as the tall Alleganies, 
Like Barclay, I'd walk the wide world round- 
about — 
And rescue, wherever I found them, poor royal- 
ist zanies, 
And put with my vigor their rulers to rout ! 
(Aside) — Don't, for Heaven's sake, gentlemen, 
make such a shout ! 

Oh, give me a breast that expands like the 

ocean, 

And eyes like the vigilant planets above, 

Then, oh then, to my heart I will hug with 

emotion 

The people I smile on — the people I love I 

(Aside) — Provided the perquisite pay, I approve. 

tom lug. (Aside.) 

Now he must give us the hornpipe he danced 
at the fancy ball, with Aunt Peggy on his back. 
Cook will do for Aunt Peggy, if she brushes up 
a little. — Come, alderman, another favor to 
your constituents ! 



What's that, Tom ? Anything you can ask 
-you know I am the servant of the people. 

TOM LUG. 

Nothing much : I'm a'most ashamed to ask 



you, it's such a mere trifle. — Joe, you ask him, 
you ain't afraid of the penitentiary keepers. 
Why, Uncle Brisk, to make a plain story of it, 
you must give us your fancy-ball hornpipe 
around the table with cook on your back. 

brisk. (Feigns sudden sickness.) 

Landlord, what have you put in these lob- 
sters ? They have made me sick as death — 
Give me fresh air — There, so ; now lead me 
to the door : I shall be well in a minute. 
(Is conducted to the door, and makes off.) 



What a kind good man Mr. Brisk is — he's 
broke his constitution working at dinners, and 
suppers, and cold collations for the people ! 
That was a capital song, as good as the quiris- 
ter himself could give us ; but I'm afraid the 
idea of cook and he in a hornpipe was too much 
for his nerves ! Any how, three cheers and our 
votes to a man for little Jack Brisk ! 

END OF ACT II. 



ACT III. 



SCENE I. 

Gudgeon's house. 

Gudgeon and Glib. 

gudgeon. 

I begin to feel the anxieties of a candidate. 
Last night I was harassed with a vision of six 
constables standing around me with staves, 
and with their hats in their hands, bowing to 
to me — thus. After this, a fellow in a white 
apron came in with a large green turtle, which 
seemed to be lying on its back, and struggling 
with its hands and feet to turn itself over. I 
suppose the poor thing was troubled with indi- 
gestion. 

GLIB. 

You shouldn't give way to these feelings, 
Mr. Gudgeon : they will unman you before the 
election. 

GUDGEON. 

Not they ! I was no more scared by the 
sight of the six constables and their staves, 
than if I had been an alderman all my life, or 
if they had been so many plain farmers, with 
ox-gads, viewing a prize-bullock, in my own na- 
tive town of Danbury. 



I think it would have a good effect to men- 
tion that in my address to the citizens at one 
of the meetings : they'll call you the fearless 
Gudgeon — What is your opinion, sir ? 



Scene I.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



13] 



It might — yes, it might. "Well, sir, you may 
try it — but not as if it came from me. You can 
state, for instance, that my man William over- 
heard me talking in my sleep, as he came in 
for my boots this morning. 

GLIB. 

And the remark about the ox-gads ? 



You might add, that William thought I lay 
as proud and unconcerned as if the constables 
had been — had been — what would occur to 
him ? — so many puffed bladders ! 

GLIB. 

And you one of them. 

GUDGEON. 

And I one of them. 

GLIB. 

That will produce a sensation in the meet- 
ing.' 

GUDGEON. 

Unquestionably — I expect it. Hadn't I bet- 
ter be present, so that they can come up and 
shake hands with me, after the allusion. I 
don't see how I can avoid it. 



Perhaps it would be more proper for you to 
remain at home, looking out of a second story 
window to address the people, when, in their 
enthusiasm, they shall adjourn to meet in front 
of your house. — That's always a great stroke 
of policy, to make a speech to people in the 
streets, when the boys are hooting, and the 
carts rattling up and down, and the engines 
puffing by with trumpets ! 

GUDGEON. 

But how will my voice answer ? It's hardly 
a two-story voice. 



Capitally, capitally : you have a good round 
bass, and if, when you see a ragged fellow 
shivering in the farthest edge of the crowd, 
with his hands in his pockets, you address 
your remarks to him, as if you were stand- 
ing in a cold entry, and calling for your over- 
coat, you will succeed in making a happy effort 
of it. 

GUDGEON. 

With a nightcap on, as if I had rushed straight 
from my bed, to meet my constituents ? 



Without a nightcap. Positively without a 
nightcap — That is aristocratic ; but you inight, 



if you choose, in your shirt sleeves — they are 
republican. 

GUDGEON. 

That's a mystery. 



So it is — and so is the connection between 
democratical principles and threadbare indispen- 
sables ; — but that's the ground on which they'll 
beat us, if any: Brisk dresses shabbier than 
you. 

GUDGEON. 

But then consider, my dear sir, Brisk hasn't 
my form, arm, leg, my back and bust. 



Allow me to suggest, sir, that during an elec- 
tion, we none of us have backs or busts to be 
thought of. I entreat you, as I have before, to 
abandon these fancies : I ask it as the greatest 
favor you can confer on me, on your party, on 
the community, to put on corduroys at least, 
my own wishes are for fustian, during the con- 
test. Wear a pea-jacket with a few rents in 
it, and an appearance of being soiled with 
cigar smoke and tar. 

GUDGEON. 

I will do my uttermost. 



And I think you had better send your coach 
into the country, darken your astral lamp, and 
take down your damask curtains. 

GUDGEON. 

Well, sir, — I will consider of it. In the 
mean time, I trust you will exert yourself in 
your harangues at our public meetings. Ride 
high, sir — ride high. Express your willingness 
to die for your country — in the last — the deep- 
est ditch — 

GLIB. 

I shall do my endeavor. 

GUDGEON. 

Sternly and fearlessly. 

GLIB. 

I will. 

Enter a Boy. 

BOY. 

Tom Lug, sir, the bully's round the corner, 
and says he'll drop Mr. Glib, if he catches him, 
like a shot hawk — and he'll curry him, he says, 
like a bull's hide — and he'll skin him like a 
weasel ! 

C UPC EON. 

This is unpleasant news. 



132 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act III. 



I wonder if I could get out by the back fence, 
without being observed ? — It's unpleasant to 
meet that man in the face, his breath smells so 
of brandy and oakum. 



There's nothing but a clothes-line and a cis- 
tern, sir, on the other side. 



I'd rather run the risk of drowning and hang- 
ing combined, than encounter that barbarous 
fellow. [Retiring. 

GUDGEON. 

I believe you address the proscribed lamp- 
lighters to-night ? [Calling after him. 

GLIB. 

The proscribed watchmen and lamplighters. 

GUDGEON. 

Give it to them vigorously, if you please. 

GLIB. 

I shall. 

GUDGEON. 

Don't spare words ! 

GLIB. 

Depend upon me : I'll lay the dictionary 
waste ! I'll ravage it ! [Exit glib. 



SCENE II. 

JBlanding's Apartments-. 

BLANDING. 

My mistress might as well be at Nova Zem- 
bla or the North Pole, as far as I am concerned ; 
she is as much to the cham of Tartary (now 
that I am forbidden her presence) as she is to 
me. Where is the difference, I would like to 
know, between a lady and a whale or a walrus, 
if one is not permitted to enjoy her society : to 
smile with her, muse, meditate, and talk. — Now 
if I were in the country, I should hang myself; 
— but the city, the glorious city, warms one's 
brain like a November sun, and sets it all in a 
ferment with contrivance and strategy — I am 
not to see Kate Brisk any more — ha ! ran it 
so? at the penalty of a chastisement. Now 
see, Master Brisk, how soon your rod of chas- 
tisement turns into a serpent of revenge, and 
your bully is cozened by a gentler man in his 
wits. Here, ye old badges of obscurity, I throw 
ye off ! I disdain the name and the vocation of 
Charles Blanding, and am, henceforth, at least 
to this threatening father, Mr. Jefferson Goss, 
grandnephew to the United States senator, by 
the mother's side — I think this weak fish will 
run into this net, and while he is floundering, 



we will get far enough out at sea, I trust, to 
make a more certain cast. [Exit. 



5 



SCENE III. 

A public room. 
The Committee and Crowdek. 



I agree with you, as to the muscular arm on 
the banner, with a hammer aloft ; I think the 
addition of a stout leg would be judicious : 
there are many cordwainers in the ward, that 
would be won over by the device. A stout 
leg in a neat pump, and no stocking, to show 
the calf distinctly. This will please the butch- 
ers too, who are proud of their legs. 

first com. man. 
The stout leg, then ; shall it be set down ? 



ALL. 



Agreed. 



But, mind me, mark it down to cost not more 
than one dollar and a half. 

second com. man. {Writing.) 

One stout leg, naked and in a pump, twelve 
shillings. 

CROWDER. 

We must be economical this campaign, for 
the freeholders begin to complain that the taxes 
of the party to meet the expenses of an elec- 
tion, are getting to be as bad as the plunder- 
ings of the corporation — What noise was that 
above ? 

FIRST COM. MAN. 

I heard nothing. 

CROWDER. 

They say to run a sewer through a man's 
pocket and drain it to the last cent, is as bad 
as to cut a street through his domicil and leave 
him the rubbish to pay damages. 

SECOND COM. MAN. 

How, in the name of Heaven, can an elec- 
tion be conducted without money ? Joe Surge 
must be hired to fight, and must be paid his fists' 
worth. — Tom Lug must make himself a nuis- 
ance, to keep decent voters of the other side 
back ; and he must have a percentage on the 
disgust he excites. We must have Blaster to 
blow the trumpet and to brow-beat and be scur- 
rilous when he's off duty, and I'm sure he 
should be handsomely remunerated for the use 
of his person. He works as cheap as any bully 
we ever had — besides the trumpeting. 



Scene III.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



133 



CROWDER. 

Very true — every word; — but we can dimin- 
ish our committee expenses a little, at least, for 
the sake of appearances. We can smoke half 
a box and carry none away : we can leave the 
candle-ends for next evening, and not throw 
them at any clean person we may see passing 
in the street : a quart of beer apiece should 
satisfy us, and we can be more strict with our 
landlord, and have him render a nightly account 
of charges. I hear that noise again — what can 
it be ? Eaves-dropping ? 

FIRST COM. MAN. 

I hear it this time — it's overhead. 

SECOND COM. MAN. 

Let's hunt the rascal, and if we capture him, 

we'll have a roasted goose to insert in the bill. 

[The Committee go out and return.] 



Strange — that we could find nothing, not so 
much as the tip of a nose or an ear to levy on ; 
but a political spy during a warm election, 
shrinks like a plant in a tropical climate, and I 
believe could even hide himself in the knot of a 
pocket handkerchief, or the crack of a wain- 
scot. 

SECOND COM. MAN. 

I saw Botch in the shadow of a house over 
the way as we came in. 

CROWDER. 

When I sounded the chimney to ascertain if 
he might be ambushed there, I heard some frail 
thing crash, which might have been Botch's 
skull. It yielded like a hollow thing, whatever 
it was. — To avoid any further chance of listen- 
ers, let's call in the landlord's bill and adjourn 
till to-morrow. — Landlord ! landord ! 

landlord. (From without.) 

Coming ! 

CROWDER. 

We want your bill. That will bring him up 
with it, short and quick. 

landlord. (From without.) 

It's e'en a'most made out — only a few items 
to add. 

Enter landlord. 

CROWDER. 

Come, read it off, jolly Job Works, in a good 
clear half-price voice — by particulars, and it's 
cash on the nail. — Begin ! 

LANDLORD. 

That I likes — " four sperm candle" — Nothing 
like the ready metal — " Two quarts beer, with 
snuffers." 

9 



CROWDER. 

Well ; he has a fine throat of his own — it 
smacks of the spigot. 

LANDLORD. 

Room-hire, cigars, and two julaps, with 
benches. 



Well. 



CROWDER. 



LANDLORD. 



A small pig with lemon. 

CROWDER. 

A pig with lemon ! 

LANDLORD. 

Two plates pickled beans, two rolls twisted 



CROWDER. 

Beans, bread, and beer ! 

LANDLORD. 

Six lobster and two pound sage cheese : like- 
wise a splendid pork pie made of chops. 

CROWDER. 

A splendid pork pie made of chops ! 

LANDLORD. 



And a suet pudding. 



Nothing else ? 



Nothing else. 



LANDLORD. 



CROWDER. 



We have seen none of these things. Have 
you ? (Turning to one Com. Man.) Lobster 
and sage cheese — Have you? (To another.) 
Pig with lemon, bread, beans, and beer — pork 
pie, and suet pudding ! 

LANDLORD. 

This may be as it may, Mr. Crowder ; but 
you sent down for the things — 



Sent down for the things ! 



LANDLORD. 



Yes, sir, in a very unpleasant, and, begging 
the committee gentlemen's pardon, a very un- 
civil way — you might have found a better mes- 
senger nor a stone bottle as big as my two fist. 



Ah ! I begin to see how it is — that cursed 
experiment of mine. 

LANDLORD. 

Yes, sir, that experiment of yours — it came 



134 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act lit. 



bouncing down the chimney like mad, and first 
it strikes my cook, poor hunchback Jenny, in 
the small, or I should, say, in the big of the 
back, as she was stooping over a dish of prawns 
for Tom Lug. 



FIRST COM. MAN. 



Bad enough 



LANDLORD. 



Yes, gentlemen, bad enough you may say, 
for, springing from Jenny's hump an it had been 
a horsehair cushion, away it flies on to the ta- 
ble where the alderman had been sitting just a 
minute before — it's a mortal mercy his life was 
spared — and smash, smash it goes, like artillery, 
till every living dish on the board was frag- 
ments and scatterings. 

FIRST COM. MAN. 

We must practise economy, Crowder. 

SECOND COM. MAN. 

We must be prudent this campaign, for the 
freeholders begin to complain — sewer through 
the pocket — segars and candle-ends, and we 
must be a little frugal in our beer. 



Mr. Works, you'll be good enough to charge 
your bill to the ward, as usual ; and you'll 
oblige me by smothering this unhappy break- 
age under the general expenses. 

SCENE IV. 

Crumb's house. 

Old Crumb and Citizens. 

FIRST CITIZEN. 

But, sir, it is the wish of a large body of the 
people of this ward, that you should become a 
candidate ; they arc tired of these squabbling 
office-seekers, and wish to have for their alder- 
man, once more, a plain, honest citizen. 



I am plain, I know, and, I believe, honest ; 
but I have no other claims for this honor. I 
have never harangued at public meetings, giv- 
en charity at noonday, clutched the skirts of 
great men, sat on midnight caucuses, walked 
prominently in processions or at celebrations ; 
nor have I been seen at public dinners, thun- 
dering out toasts and sentiments that sounded 
loud with patriotism and the name of the peo- 
ple. How can I be your candidate ? You had 
better look elsewhere, the creature grows in 
every street. 

FIRST CITIZEN. 

You are a plain, true citizen, as we said be- 
fore, and for that we choose you. We are sat- 
isfied with your private acts, your wayside 



charities to the sick, the orphan, and the op- 
pressed ; some of us have seen you, in the 
storm and at the dead of night, performing your 
offices of kindness and humanity. The light of 
a single star upon a good deed, dear sir, is worth 
more than the blaze of the sun or the approval 
of a thousand eyes. We will take you as you 
are, and for what you are, if you will allow us. 



Give a moment, and I will answer you. 

[Citizens retire. 

CRUMB. 

I care not for the honor, that is certain ; I 
have no private end to answer, that is certain ; 
nor will it suit my habits to wrangle by the 
hour, or to sit at late feasts, where man shows 
but as a creature of one sense — mere appetite. 
Again, the city needs friends ; her revenues are 
wasted, her foundations sapped with unthrift 
and neglect ; an old man's voice may be lis- 
tened to when younger tongues would sound 
idle ; the gray haired pilot may be heard and 
heeded, when he attests that the rock is at hand, 
and the ship fast foundering. Ah ! another 
thought, deeper than all these, I will be the candi- 
date ! — the honest enthusiasm of the ward shall 
elect me — our Master Brisk's tone will change 
when I am in the council. He will seek my 
influence, and hope to get it, and, perchance, 
will yield to my old wish about Blanding and 
his daughter. That perchance — that happy, 
bright-omened perchance, fixes me. {Aloud.) — 
Gentlemen, come in ! 

Enter Citizens. 

FIRST CITIZEN. 

Your answer? 



I will act ! 



FIRST CITIZEN. 



And so will we ! We thank you sir, and when 
the sun rises on Thursday morning, read our 
thanks in our recorded voices. Good day, good sir. 



I bid you all, good men, good day. [They re- 
tire.] And an early sun thereafter shall shine 
upon a happy bride and groom, if old Zachary 
Crumb is a true man and an alderman ! 

SCENE V. 

An apartment in Brisk's house. 
Brisk, alone. — Enter Servant. 

SERVANT. 

A gentleman, with great black whiskers, is 
below, sir. He swells and ruffles an he were 
the governor's son. 



Scene V.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



135 



BRISK. 

Ask him up, immediately. [Exit Servant.] 
It's Jefferson Goss, from the description ; my 
heart flutters like a young pigeon's. I am in 
the same house, under the same roof with the 
grand-nephew of a senator. I hear the creak- 
ing of his boots ! Hark — he coughed ! He is 
on the stairs. Was I entitled to expect this ? 
What weight and character this will give to 
my canvass, that I have been closeted with a 
functionary's near relative ! Besides, my daugh- 
ter Kate, now that that fellow, Blanding, is out 
of the way — but I must be prepared to address 
him formally. [ Walks up and down reciting — 
" Sir, it affords me much," &c. — When Bland- 
ing enters, advances, and addresses him ;] 



Enter Blanding, as Jefferson Goss. 



Sir, it affords me great happiness to see you 
— unmixed happiness. I will not disguise the 
pleasure it gives me to receive, under my hum- 
ble roof, so near a connexion of so distin- 
guished a character. 

BLANDING. 

{Aside — Now a little figurative impudence, 
for the great man's nephew — who may be 
supposed to have been reared in pot-houses 
at the capitol.) Sir, you do me proud ! Proud, 
sir, as if I sat on Chimborazzo, with a bald 
eagle in my lap. 

BRISK. 

(Aside — what a ward-meeting orator he would 
make !) Be good enough to be seated — this 
way, sir, if you please, and condescend to par- 
take of these humble viands. 



BLANDING. 

Thank you, sir, I will gorge. 



(Aside — What a happy style of expression !) 
I keep this table spread for my friends during 
the election. You will find this beefs-tongue 
exceeding nice. It is sound policy, it strikes 
me, this of overpowering a man's understand- 
ing with detachments of roast-beef and blackber- 
ry-pudding. 



But don't you think it best to skirmish a lit- 
tle at first, about the outskirts, with bottled-ale 
and cogniac ? 



Decidedly, sir ; this shakes the outer walls. 
Then you come up with your heavy troops, 
Turkey and the Porte, and in a few minutes 
you have" possession of the man. 



BLANDING. 

Between ourselves, Brisk, this mutton of 

your's is d d nice. It's almost as fine as 

I have ever known to be raised on the old sen- 
ator's farm. Were these cranberries reared in 
the hothouse or in bed3 ? 

BRISK. 

In beds, I think; they are Long island 
berries. 

BLANDING. 

They make an excellent sauce with wood- 
cock — I believe this is woodcock. 



Yes, sir, that is woodcock, and considered 
very choice; it's from the Jersey meadows. 
(Aside — the young man has a keen appetite — 
but what penetration, what insight he betrays 
in his dishes ! the true senatorial blood. I have 
no doubt he'd appreciate Kate at once. I'll call 
her.) Kate ! Daughter— 

BLANDING. 

I beg your pardon, sir, but I hope there are 
no ladies about the house — I'm excessively 
timid, timid as a — rhinoceros. 



Enter Kate Brisk. 



My daughter, sir; Kate, let me introduce 
you to Mr. Goss, the senator's nephew. 



(Aside, not looking at him) — Some disgusting 
politician, no doubt, with his tariffs and curren- 
cies, high rates and low rates, and scurrilities 
both high and low. — I wish he would carry his 
conversation among the Hottentots and other 
heathen, rather than bring it into this house. 

(Pouts.) 



Kate, will you be good enough to observe — 
it's Mr. Goss, Mr. Jefferson Goss. 

blanding. (Aside.) 

I can advise her better who it is. (Hums a 
tune in a low voice.) 



(Looking at him — aside) — As I live, it's 
Charles Blanding. — Ah, I understand the 
knave ! (Aloud, and in a different tone) — 
Good evening, Mr. Goss — you are welcome. 
What is the pleasant news, sir ? 

brisk. (Aside.) 

I knew she must change her line of behavior, 
the moment she obtained a glimpse of his fine 
person ! 



136 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act III. 



BLANDING. 



Nothing, madam, stranger or pleasanter, than 
that a soland goose was seen crossing the sound 
yesterday in pursuit of an eagle who fled — 



This way — nearer, if you please, sir — and 
give me the nicer particulars of this singular 
history. [Draws him apart. 

BLANDING. 

The eagle fled, Kate, till hegot as near heav- 
en as he thought proper, when he turned and 
struck his talons into the thin pate of the stupid 
bird, and it fell out of the sky, a leaden fool, as 
it was. (Aside) — This way, further. 



Oh the assurance of the thing called man ! 
How could you venture to practise in this way 
on my good father. 

BLANDING. 

Venture, Kate ! there is no venture in it : he 
expends his industry in contriving bars to his 
garden ; I employ my agility in leaping them ; 
and the mutual operation is aided by our being 
cits and strangers. 

KATE. 

How will you make that appear ? 

BLANDING. 

Easily. Now, if we had lived in your favor- 
ite rural vicinity, where every boor and plough- 
man is classed in the memory of his neighbor- 
hood, like so many bugs and beetles in the Lin- 
nsean system, I might have as well attempted 
to borrow your father's head of hair, with his 
eyes open, for a fancy wig, as to get access to 
you without his knowledge. 



Then you ride your old packsaddle, the city, 
still ; making that a carry-all for your tricks 
and stratagems, your knavish doings and impu- 
dent disguises. 

BLANDING. 

In truth, I do : and now confess, Kate, that 
the town is the place for lovers — their true and 
natural hive. 

KATJE. 

What they lose in simplicity, is not — 

BLANDING. 

Is gained in quickness of wit and variety of 
expedients for their mutual enjoyment : the 
lecture to be criticised ; the mountebank to be 
stared at ; the theatre to be dazzled with ; the 
concert of sweet sounds heard together. 



Ah, if you knew my honest father's preju- 



dices just now against sweet sounds, you would 
scarcely venture to remain here, even in your 
disguise. His prejudices show themselves 
dreadfully. 

brisk. (Aside.) 

Love at first sight, I verily believe. They 
are already as intimate as a pair of assembly 
men. Just what I could desire. 

BLANDING. 

Dreadfully : — see what faces he is making at 
me this very minute ! But in what ways, I 
pray ? A politician that takes all the world to 
his bosom, should scarcely have prejudices. 

KATE. 

From his sudden horror of your occupation, 
he has sold my piano to a lady going into the 
country, at half price. 



BLANDING. 



Well. 



He has had lids put upon all the key-holes, 
because they whistle. 



BLANDING. 



Well, 



And the chimney pots taken down, because 
they sing. 



BLANDING. 



And further ? 



He has sacrificed the old tortoiseshell cat, 
because he was told her purr was a musical 
concord in A. 

BLANDING. 

What a passion for music the pleasant old 
gentleman must enjoy ! Shades of Bethooven 
and Mozart, look upon the melodious old crea- 
ture kindly ! — I should like to have his opinion 
of the disputed solo in Handel's Creation. 
[Takes his flute from his pocket and sounds a 
stave. 

brisk. (Rushing forward.) 

Good God ! did you hear that, Kate ? Did 
you, Mr. Goss ? — The sound of a flute ; there 
must be incendiaries about the house. After 
all the pains I have taken to escape that odious 
player — to shut him from my ears and my 
house — I am afraid he has obtained an en- 
trance — It seemed as if he was in this very 
room. Let's search every nook, corner, and 
cranny. Be good enough to assist us, Mr. 
Goss ; for this is really a serious matter. 
[They search under chairs t behind paintings, #c] 



Scene V.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



13" 



— Why, sir, the trouble I have taken to silence 
that fellow and his cursed serenading flute, is 
really astonishing. Sir, (panting) I have planted 
two approved bull-dogs in my yard ; I have 
employed a private watchman, with a club of 
double the ordinary dimensions in front ; I have 
had a vacant ground to the northeast, in which 
he practised his discordant stick, declared a 
nuisance by the corporation ; and, moreover, I 
have ordered my servants, sir, if they detected 
a squinting, limping, awkward fellow, loitering 
about the house, to assail him from the upper 
stories, without remorse, with such vessels as 
might be at hand. 

BLANDING. 

Why, sir, your benevolence is unbounded, for 
you have offered him every variety of death — 
drowning, throttling, and knocking in the head. 
An ungracious scamp he must be, if he doesn't 
accept your kindness in one shape or the other ; 
an ungrateful, pudding-headed villain ! 



Extermination is the best he deserves : if I 
had my way, I would annihilate the brood, and 
make room for men of merit, like yourself, Mr. 
Goss. 

BLANDING. 

The devil blast my stars, but you flatter me, 
Mr. Brisk, beyond my merits, entirely beyond 
my merits. But I must bid you good day, Mr. 
Brisk — good day, sir — I shall be with you early 
again. Good day, Miss Brisk. 

[Exit Blanding. 

brisk. 

A charming young man ! 

kate. (Dubiously.) 

Charming indeed ! 

BRISK. 

What a contrast to that odious Blanding ! 
You must confess a vast distance between the 
two. 

KATE. 

It's too palpable, sir. 

BRISK. 

Do you think you could love him, Kate ? 

KATE. 

I think I might, if I had time. I am not 
sure. 

BRISK. 

Well, Kate, strive hard: turn your thoughts 
diligently that way — and perhaps I will for- 
give the old offence ; perhaps — recollect ! 

end of act III. 



ACT IV. 

SCENE I. 

The open street. 

Kate Brisk and Mrs. Gudgeon, meeting. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Well, Kate, poultry flies high in the market, 
this morning, and eggs are only four to the doz- 
en. I really believe the times have reached our 
roosts and henhouses, and that hens and tur- 
keys have become so dissolute and idle, with 
long holding of warm nests and abundance of 
good feeding, that they care not a straw for the 
public interest ! However, this is a large-built 
and fine-looking pullet that I have bought, and 
if it makes the dish it ought to make, we shall 
know what's what in three days from this time. 



It's certainly a noble bird ; and these pigeons' 
eggs, where did you purchase them ? 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

From my old one-and-ele raipence, the fat 
huckster, who says that twelve pigeons' eggs, 
made into an omelet with four strips of bacon, 
bring health and luck to the man that eats 
them : what will Mr. Robert Gudgeon say to 
that ? Here's a sheep's gizzard, too, to be taken 
at ten o'clock in the evening, made into a pie. 



What is that for ? 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

To make Mr. Gudgeon amiable during the 
election. And here are two peacock's feath- 
ers to lay under his pillow to make him digni- 
fied. The boy is coming on with two rounds of 
beef and a dozen strings of Bolognas to feed 
his friends with, to keep them in good humor ; 
and I've told him to buy some fresh chickweed 
and goosegrass to carry in his pocket ; they say 
it draws voters — at least, Charles Blanding told 
me so. Poor boy ! I'm afraid you'll see him no 
more, Kate. 



No more, Mrs. Gudgeon ! Well, I shall pre- 
serve my senses, I hope, if I do not, now that I 
have seen Mr. Goss. Sweet, sweet young 
man ! 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Who is he ? Who is this Mr. Goss ? 



This Mr. Goss— Mrs. Gudgeon, T am aston- 
ished—Mr. Jefferson Goss, tho yrand-nephew 
of the senator. 



138 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act av. 



MRS GUDGEON. 

What look has this young man ? I think I 
know the Gosses. 

KATE. 

Firstly, a blue, smiling eye. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Well, all young men have smiling eyes. 

KATE. 

Arched brows, hair, auburn and gentle, with 
the light glancing from it every way. 



MRS. GUDGEON. 



His nose ? 



Straight and spirited — a pale, thoughtful 
cheek, and a sweet chin, with a mole on it. 
{Aside, — The foolish old owl ! she must know 
it's Charles.) 



MRS. GUDGEON. 



Pll warrant by that mark and my sunflower- 
coverlid, he belongs to the Gosses of Cross riv- 
er. Auburn hair, you said. 



Yes. 



MRS. GUDGEON. 



And a mole on his chin ? — I know the Gosses 
as if they were blood-relations — what is the 
young man's gait and aspect ? 



Gentle — and he sometimes looks up ana some- 
times down. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

The very marks ! And his height ? 

KATE. 

Middling, you might say, neither tall nor 
short. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

True, again. There can be no doubt he 
is one of the Cross river Gosses. But you 
have not given him your heart, Kate, as you 
seem to say by sighing ? 

KATE. 

I must confess a partiality, Mrs. Gudgeon. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

What ! and desert Charles Blanding, for this 
fellow ? 

KATE. 

Willingly, and I think Blanding would sec- 
ond it, for Goss is his particular, in fact, his 
bosom friend. However, have one or the other of 
them I am determined. I think it will be Goss : at 



least, father wishes it to be so. You shall come 
to the wedding, Mrs. Gudgeon, and be pleased 
with the bridegroom, too. ! [Exit kate brisk. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Pleased with a cross child, or a horse in over- 
alls sooner ! Foolish, fickle thing ! Kind Charles 
Blanding must be abandoned for this lacquered 
upstart, that professes to be his friend for the 
purpose of seducing his mistress. That Goss 
is a rascal, I'll warrant, for the Gosses always 
was said to have bad blood in their veins from 
their grandfather, the tory quartermaster. 
We'll see whether poor Blanding's to be cast 
off in this way, like so much foul linen. I'll 
have Mr. Gudgeon in this business in four-and- 
twenty hours, or my name shall be taken 
from the family record as Margaret Cox, now 
Gudgeon. 



SCENE II. 

The street. 

Botch and Gudgeon. 

botch. 

Oh ! this is dreadful news : support yourself 
against the wall, Mr. Gudgeon — you had better. 
Shocking ! shocking ! 

GUDGEON. 

What is it ? For mercy's sake what is it, 
Botch ? 

BOTCH. 

They've got Old Crumb up for a candidate. 

GUDGEON. 

What for, alderman ? 

BOTCH. 

Yes, sir. 

GUDGEON. 

Against me ? 

BOTCH. 






Yes, sir, and he's as popular as the baker 
before breakfast, or the brewer after dinner. 
Whole flocks of people are winging their way 
to the polls, like so many pigeons in autumn. 

GUDGEON. 

This must be put a stop to. 

BOTCH. 

They come out of the houses by hundreds ; 
all the carriages have got Zachary Crumb 
on them, and the minister has voted for him 
already. 

GUDGEON. 

There must be an end to this. 



Scene II.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



139 



I doubt whether there be such a thing as an 
end to it. 

Enter Glib. 

glib. 

I have just halted to tell you that the whole 
lower section of the ward has gone for Crumb, 
in a body. 

GUDGEON. 

You know that's a poor part of the ward. 

GLIB. 

It's rumored that the Quakers are moving in 
his favor, and I'm afraid the plague will get 
among the lamplighters and watchmen, for 
these bodies lie near each other, and the Qua- 
kers chiefly furnish for the public lamps. So look 
to yourselves — I am off, to address the meeting 
of proscribed citizens of this class. {Exit glib. 



I forgot to tell you, sir, that they have plant- 
ed a great liberty-pole on one of the corners. 



Thank Heaven ! that hasn't a vote. 



No, sir, that's not a citizen, although it car- 
ries its head so high. And they've got flags dis- 
played from a thousand private houses, with 
Crumb's name on in large letters — twice as 
big as ours. 

GUDGEON. 

Who could have done that? Our painter 
was ordered to put my name in the very largest 
possible capitals. 



Besides this, sir, they have brought out two 
immense wagons, that carry twenty-four deep, 
and they are both hurrying voters up, five in a 
row, breast-wise, like so many fish packed in a 
firkin for market. 



Botch, this is certainly the most astonishing 
thing I have ever known. I have heard of wild 
buffaloes rushing down rocks a hundred and 
fifty feet high ; but for human-kind, why, it's 
Bheer madness. Was it a full moon last night ? 



It was. 



GUDGEON. 



It must be that — their brains are turned. I 
consider the city is ruined ; it never can recov- 
er from this shock. I shall have no documents 
to sign for the corporation — that's clear. I am 



sorry I sat up last night to address the voters, 
for it was a great inconvenience. 

BOTCH. 

Don't despair, sir, I beg you not to despair. 

GUDGEON. 

I must despair, Botch ; there's no other en- 
joyment left to me. 



Can't you walk between the two men drunk, 
as we agreed ? — that might cheer you up. 



Thank you for the suggestion. I'll do it. It 
must have an exhilarating effect, and may turn 
the tide. Get the men ready. {Botch retiring.'] 
But, Boteh, be good enough not to have them 
overdone ; not too drunk, if you please. 

{Exeunt gudgeon and botch severally. 

SCENE III. 

The same. 

Brisk and Crowder. 

CROWDER. 

We must carry this election, or I am undone. 
They have levied on the liberty-pole in front 
of my door as personal property ; and the glo- 
rious cap, with all those mottoes that please 
the mob so much, will be struck off with the 
greatest rudeness, by the hammer of some ten- 
penny auctioneer. — Foolish love of civil liberty ! 
I had better have clothed my back, or lined my 
belly, than have spent my substance in planting 
liberty-trees that are as barren as crabs. 



Poh ! Crowder — you know better ; it's a per- 
fect bread-plant to the office-seeker ; and more 
poor Christians have gained a living by shaking 
it, and opening their mouths and throwing 
up their caps under it, than all the peach, 
plum, apricot, and greening trees in Christen- 
dom. Forty thousand worthy gentlemen, in 
this noble republic of ours alone, climb this 
tree annually, and furnish their families a very 
pretty livelihood. Think of that 

CROWDER. 

I do think of that ; and if I only had a snttg 
government birth during one president's term, 
I'd whistle at Fortune, and rattle my silver 
with the best men in the land. 



If we succeed, as we must — look at the pros- 
pect, it's almost enough to bring tears into one's 
eyes — you shall be made a contractor for the 
almshouse, and have a nice little profit on every 
morsel that goes into a pauper's mouth : a per- 
fect prince of a contractor : and not a candle 



140 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act IV. 



shall be snuffed in the establishment, nor an i 
eyelid dropped, without your having clipped 
the tallow and discounted the drug for both. 



SCENE IV. 



CROWDER. 



I am then to have the furnishing of physic as 
well as food to my poor children on the island ? 



Of course, for medicine is a natural part of 
the diet of a pauper. He requires scouring as 
much as pewter pots, and takes sulphur as 
freely as if he had been educated in a match 
factory. — The very poorhouse dog, Crowder, 
shall not dare to shake himself in the yard 
without your permission, and a collar of your 
providing, to make it known that he's the slave 
of King Crowder, and owes him a per-centage. 
And so we will reward you. 

CROWDER. 

And how will you reward yourself? 



Very simply. — You have heard of Greenwich 
lane ? — Well ; my great-uncle, the bachelor, 
owned a small plot of ground there, in the 
heart of a block, which he used as a circus, 
and made a tolerable income therefrom, with a 
bear and fiddle, two stunted shetlands, and a 
loafer clown ; but, since that lively period, and 
a different current of population, the ground 
hasn't paid taxes, and has, in fact, been a dead 
weight at the end of my pocket. Now, mark 
me, when I become alderman, we will have 
that same Greenwich lane broadened into an 
avenue, which will just take the short front 
lots away, and bring my pretty plot of ground 
upon the street, without a penny's assessment. 
All this shall be done for the good of the peo- 
ple, the health of the neighborhood, or any 
other patriotic and high-minded considerations. 

CROWDER. 

Nobly contrived ! But here's a new diffi- 
culty — Old Zachary Crumb, who has been 
started by the citizens, you know, is said to be 
making great headway. 



Poh ! A weak old man, who will make about 
as much headway as a superannuated race- 
horse brought out upon the course ten years 
after he has lost his natural heat and powers of 
motion. 



The people, they say, are gathering for him 
in great numbers. 



Have no fears ! it's only a device of our 
own friends to blind the enemy. Two thirds of 
the votes that go in the boxes for Gudgeon and 
Crumb, will come out, mark my word, for John 
Brisk, and no other ! [Exeunt severally. 



Glib, discovered on a platform, speaking, with 
citizens before him. 



Ay ! fellow citizens, I dare avouch, 

And call star-spangled heaven to witness it, 

Posterity shall know — be proud to know, 

Ye gallant band of watchmen, thus proscribed, 

And lamplighters of eighteen thirty-five — 

To know that ye your caps thrust back, your 

coats 
Threw off, and down your ladders cast, despi- 
sing 
The power that took your offices away. 
How in their cradles will your grandbabes 

thrill. 
Thinking that they are yours ! — sons of men 

that dared 
To blow a blast of stern defiance 
On the trump — 

citizen. (To his neighbor.) 

Now we'll have something nice ; he's always 
good on trumpets. 



Of patriotic fire that shook 
These soup-fed tyrants in their chairs of pow- 
er: — 
That you it was, who raised the bloody flag — 

CITIZEN. 

His flags, if such a thing be possible, is bet- 
ter than his trumpets. 

GLIB. 

Far up on high, where still it shall be held, 
Until to fibres heaven's winds have whistled it 
No larger than the small spool-cotton threads. 
Yes, yes, my fellow-citizens, inspired 
With large and noble thoughts, and in a cause 
That sun-] it planets might be jealous of — 
The cause of lamplighters extinguished, 
Of watchmen wakened — burst beneath the feet 
Of these stern men, like to an earthquake 
Underneath a factory of earthenware, 
And into fifty thousand fragments break 
Their fragile power. 

CITIZEN. 

Good ! I told you his earthquakes was nice. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

That earthquake, it strikes me, burst rather 
too much like an overdone egg. 



Earthquakes is more like melons, and re- 
quires a nice hand and strong fire to get 'em 
up to the true pitch. I never heard a speaker 
that did earthquakes better than Glib. 



Scene V.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



141 



GLIB. 

Lo ! Freedom's temple, now — 

CITIZEN. 

Now listen, neighbor : if this ain't the best- 
built thing you've ever known, call me a ground- 
mole. 



Begirt with peril ! Yea, that edifice 
Reared on the bones, cemented by the blood 
Of all our grandsires and their wives, 
Hewed by their swords, and with their shields 

roofed in 
With scabbards lathed : — To hostile dire as- 
saults 
This holy, sacred temple 'gins to yield, 
Beleaguered round ; but hope, my countrymen, 
Dawns, through the darkness dawns, and 

'gainst the walls 
I see large ladders planted fearlessly. 
Yours they are, ye agile lamplighters ! 
The alarum-rap I hear — it calls aloud 
The friends of civil liberty together. 
Ye vigilant guardians of the night, 
That solemn summons from your clubs as- 
cends. — 
Now, from this huge height of rhetoric to fall : 



See how gracefully he comes down ; never 
flew from a house-top, a turtle dove gracefuller. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

In truth, my friend, he went up like a heavy- 
winged fowl, and I doubt not he will come 
down like a night hawk by daylight. 

CITIZEN. 

Well, listen — listen, and no disparagements. 

GLIB. 

I say the lamplighters, upon th' alert, 

Have sprung with all their 'customed nimble- 
ness. 

The watchmen, I repeat, the watchmen are 
awake. 

Quite wide awake, (great cheering,) and if the 
foe survive 

Beyoftd the four-and-twenty hours now next 

Ensuing, gauged by town-clock time, I pray 
you 

Call Slickson Glib, thenceforth, with my con- 
sent, 

An owl, a blind bat, and no true prophet ! 



SCENE V. 

The street. 
Various citizens, meeting. 

AN OLD CITIZEN. 

This almost makes me young again, neigh- 



bor. It looks like twenty years ago— this en- 
thusiasm for a citizen's candidate. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

Did you mark when the sky was overcast 
this morning, how the sun shone on Crumb's 
name on the banner, while all the rest was in 
darkness ? 

OLD CITIZEN. 

I did, and it's a sight I saw but once before 
in my life, and that was when this old soldier 
that voted to-day, was baptized — the sun fell 
through the upper church window on his white 
old head, as he went down into the baptistry, 
making a single golden spot in the midst of the 
congregation. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

He deserves the heavenly approval. — He is 
too pure-hearted to be made a tool of politi- 
cians; and I was glad to see the old man, 
when he approached the poll, cast off the ban- 
dages and patches they had thrust upon him, 
pretending to draw down respect for his vet- 
eran services, by these signs, from the people. 
When he learned there was a third ticket, he 
exchanged his ballots at once, and voted for 
Zachary Crumb. 

THIRD CITIZEN. 

I entered with a crowd of thirty, and when 
they were asked, " What ticket do you vote ?" 
they all answered, like a corporation of dea- 
cons on a grant for new pew-cushions, " Old 
Crumb," and shook hands as if they had met 
at a wedding. 

OLD CITIZEN. 

Yea, and I have seen old men like myself here 
to-day, that have not cast a ballot before for the 
last fifteen years. I have seen sick men, that 
apparently tarried in the world but to deposite 
a vote for Crumb, and young lads just of age, 
(but who have been smiled on by this good man 
when they have borne satchels at their sides) 
hurry up as eagerly as if it were a holiday 
business. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

They say that when Brisk entered to give 
his own vote, the eagle that his friends had 
perched on a staff above the door, shrieked and 
dropped his wings ; but this I can scarcely be- 
lieve, although I know of my own eye-knowl- 
edge, that a parrot which a sailor brought up 
with him, when his master was solicited to vote 
for Gudgeon, exclaimed, in answer for the 
sailor, " Not so green !" 

OLD CITIZEN. 

The bird was figurative, of course, for I 
marked the creature, and of a deeper literal 
green was no parrot's jacket that I ever beheld. 
That sailor, I think I was told, was one of ft 
crew of fifty that came in only last night from 



142 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act IV. 



the Friendly islands of the Pacific, and not one 
failed the true ticket. 

Enter a Fourth Citizen. 

FOURTH CITIZEN. 

Cheerly, friends, cheerly : the Brisk men 
and Gudgeonites begin to give way, and it's 
said about the poll that Crumb has the day thus 
far by a hundred ! 

OLD CITIZEN. 

Let's hasten to the ground, and, while we 
gather the lumor, give countenance to our 

friends. [Exeunt. 

SCENE VI. 

Blanding's apartments. 
Old Crumb and Blanding. 

CRUMB. 

Well, Charles, how fares your wooing ? 

BLANDING. 

Strangely enough : the more my proposed 
father-in-law dotes on me as Jefferson Goss, 
the more he detests me as Charles Blanding. 



So you are likely to succeed as a pretender, 
and to come off poorly as a man of merit ? 
Isn't that the way of the world ? 

BLANDING. 

I think it is — and while I am allowed to eat 
his cranberries and woodcock as the nephew of 
a senator that has no existence, I am regaled 
with curses as the child of my own mother. 



You are then faring admirably, I think, for 
in either event, you will have your mistress : 
if she marries you in the name of one of the 
logical postulates, what matters it, so long as 
she gets the person she likes. 

BLANDING. 

But I imagine she would scarcely be pleased 
to open house with me in an upper cell of the 
city prison, and receive her wedding calls in 
the character of an indicted impostor's wife 
with an alias ! 



Have no fears of that !— ^Do you rehearse the 
character you have assumed, carefully ? An 
error in the keeping might be disastrous. 

BLANDING. 

I believe I am doing myself justice there, for 
I read the Washington letter-writers every 
morning for politics, and visit Delmonico's and 



bully the waiters, to acquire the light style of 
manners, in the afternoon. 



Do you, as the hypothetical great man's 
nephew, disparage American institutions stead- 
ily when you are at Brisk's ? 

BLANDING. 

No, I haven't brought myself to that perfec- 
tion yet ; bnt I speak contemptuously of Amer- 
ican habits, intellect, society, commerce, liter- 
ature, and American things generally, which I 
thought would answer the same purpose. 



Of course, you have not omitted a minute 
biography of the imaginary senator ? 

BLANDING. 

By no means; for although I treat every 
other native production with contempt, I al- 
ways speak of the senator with the utmost 
reverence. I have given Brisk a particular 
history of his early life and struggles, his labors 
on a semi-weekly country newspaper, with a 
circulation of nineteen paying subscribers — 

CRUMB. 

Didn't you overstate the matter a little there ? 

BLANDING. 

His first speech on the occasion of a sheep- 
shearing in the waters of a private pond, with 
the great questions involved therein, which 
were destined (as usual) to shake our institu- 
tions and jeopard the Union itself. Then I 
described to him the style of the senator's con- 
gressional oratory — and how one day he came 
into the senate chamber without an idea, and 
spoke six hours on the establishment of a col- 
lege for young Indians in Michigan — and how, 
when he was through, the audience were so 
astonished at his fluency, they didn't recollect 
a word he had said. 



This must have made a vast deal of dry talk- 
ing for you. 

BLANDING. 

Not at all ; for it was constantly moistened 
with gentle showers of Madeira and perfect 
love, and sustained by more solid supplies. In 
fact, I relied on my appetite more than any 
other single point, to establish my character ; 
and the more I devoured, the more Brisk's eyes 
dilated with admiration of my supposed con- 
nexion with the distinguished senator. 



Well, brave it out, Charles, with a bold face 
— it pleases me to have this shrewd politician 
outwitted so cheaply. All will end well, for 
the charm is now brewing — this very hour — 



Scene VII.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



143 



that shall give us the magician's voice over 
the issues of this business. [Exeunt severally. 



SCENE VII. 

A street near the poll. 
Gudgeon and Glib, meeting. 



As I told you, you will find a house in Cherry 
street — 



Very likely — you will find houses in every 
street in the city, except the new-fangled 
streets that are no streets, but two parallels of 
speculative kerbstone. 

GUDGEON. 

But listen to me, Mr. Glib — time presses. 
It's a lodging-house (I forget the number), 
with an exchange office at one side of it, and a 
toy shop, a shop where they vend masks at the 
other. 



Why, this must be the church that you are 
directing me to ! — for there you will find false 
faces enough I'll warrant, and money-changers 
too, at times. And I'm sure there's sufficient 
sleeping done there to earn for it the character 
of a lodging-house. So I have your direction. — 
What next ? 



If it were a church, it would not be a wrong 
place, at a suitable season, to look for the man 
to whom I send you : in a word, you must go 
immediately and secure the vote of Bill Baffin, 
the stevedore. He is sick, and I'd have you 
treat him kindly. 



It shall be done, sir ; the old whale shall 
flounder his vote in, if it's his last act. 

GUDGEON. 

Kindly, I say, Mr. Glib ; but bring him by 
all means. One vote may make or ruin us. 



Oh, he shall come sir, if it's on crutches, and 
if I am obliged to be as persuasive as Patrick 
Henry. He shall come. 



And after that, you will be good enough to 
come to me at the public room, where I shall 
be engaged buoying up our friends, and eating 
burnt crackers and old cheese with the voters, 
for effect. [Exeunt severally. 



SCENE VIII. 
A sick chamber, Baffin in an armchair, <£c. 

BILL BAFFIN. 

I am afraid my last hour is at hand ; and the 
old keel will have to be sunk in the earth for 
ever, and left there to decay, like a dead root. 
The sun goes fast ; I begin to lose my reckon- 
ing, and with the next round of the time- 
keeper, I shall be counted with the ships that 
have foundered. Well, well — we'll trust yet 
to the old Commander aloft. — Who knocks ? 
In!— 

Enter glib. 

glib. 

Ah ! Mr Baffin, this is a sad pass for one of 
your mould ! — the stoutest stevedore on the 
river ! 

BAFFIN. 

Ay, and the weakest on the deathbed. 

glib. 

Not so bad — not so bad, I trust. But now 
that I look in your eye, there is something that 
shines like the next world. Anyhow, you car- 
ry a free heart out of this. 

BAFFIN. 

So I humbly hope. 



Is there nothing on your mind ? No single 
act to be performed ? No little duty undis- 
charged ? 



None that my memory wots of. So help me 
God, not one ! 



Nothing that you owe to your family — your 
fellow-citizens — your country ? 



Nothing 



Bethink yourself — think of the present day — 
the present hour. Have you, for example, de- 
posited your ballot ? — a sacred duty, remember. 

BAFFIN. 

Yes, with the sexton — as a candidate for the 
other world. Another knock — who can it be ? 
— Come in ! — my friends increase toward the 
extremity. 

Enter Crowder. 

CROWDER. 

Don't listen to that man, Mr. Baffin ! I have 
the true ticket — Human rights, sir ! 



144 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act V. 



GLIB. 

Have at you, sir ! mine is civil liberty ! 

CROWD ER. 

An unlimited democracy ! 

GLIB. 

No taxes, pew-rents, ground-rents, assess- 
ments — 

CROWDER. 

Sumptuous accommodations for paupers. 

GLIB. 

A bill of special privileges for stevedores ! 
(In Baffin's ear) — Gudgeon has a job for you. 

crowder. (Whispers.) 
The office of dockmaster. 

Baffin. (Springs up, and with his crutch 
drives them from the room.) 

Out, ravens and sharks ! Away with you, 
and let me yield my breath in peace. 
Glib. (Returning.) 

Your vote is all-important ; if your health 
should improve before sundown, send us word, 
and you shall have a coach to bring you to the 
ooJl. [Exit GLIB. 

Crowder. (Looks in.) 

Poor creature, he begins to flush ! — D n 

me, it's a vote lost. [Exit crowder. 

SCENE IX. 

The open street. 

Brisk and Crowder, meeting, in haste. 

brisk. 

Have you brought up the shabby volunteers ? 

crowder. 

I have, sir ; and they all discharged their 
oath like a drilled company of riflemen. 

brisk. 

The wollopers and tag-end ragamuffins ? 

CROWDER. 

Ay, sir ; and they came into the poll like the 
ghosts of so many pawnbrokers, with all their 
stock-in-trade at their heels. 

BRISK. 

The man with the smallpox ? 

CROWDER. 

No, but he is hard-by. 

BRISK. 

I think we had better throw him in. Mat- 
ters look desperate, and a wholesome panic may 



relieve us of superfluous voters on the other 
side — for it would surely have the effect to scat- 
ter Gudgeon's friends. They have prejudices 
against contagion, whereas, our men, you know, 
are smallpox-proof. You have not neglected 
the suburbs, I trust. 

CROWDER. 

Hardly ; we have depopulated two taverns 
at the Wallabout ; a naval force of six oyster- 
boats has landed from Staten island. We have 
scoured Newtown creek and taken captive four 
brace of honest countrymen, who are pledged 
to swear their tickets through, with flying ex- 
cursions, from time to time, into Queens county 
and the Jerseys. 



There's a one-eyed man, that tends the shot- 
tower at Kipp's bay ; I hope he'll not be for- 
gotten. He's generally overlooked on account 
of his forlorn situation. 

CROWDER. 

Hadn't we better open a few fresh brandy- 
bottles at Works's ? There's a danger of faint- 
heartedness coming on them toward night, un- 
less some such thing is done. 



By all means ; and, if necessary, broach a 
new barrel of beer. The chief of our work is 
to be done in an hour. Strike swiftly, and let 
every spigot tell on the canvass ! In the mean- 
time I'll go and talk Dutch with the German 
voters, and O'hone a little with the Hibernians. 
[Exeunt severally. 



ACT V. 
SCENE I. 

An old Citizen and others, meeting in front of 
Crumb's house. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

Well, the day is ours, and a brighter hasn't 
left the sky since this island was parcelled into 
wards ! 

OLD CITIZEN. 

Only one brighter, I admit, and that was the 
day George Washington crossed the river to 
take the chief magistrate's oath. This is a true 
and joyful day. I shall not scruple to put it in 
the family-bible as a memorable day. 

SECOND CITIZEN. 

My girl, Mary, shall work it in a sampler, with 
evergreens over the top, and a great lion rush- 
ing out of a corner to devour the sneaking spot- 
ted zebra that I will have her figure on the other 
side of the sampler. And that shall denote that 
the foul beast, the spotted knave of politics, is 



Scene I.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



145 



whipped and vanquished, and the true-hearted 
one, honest old Crumb, triumphant. 

OLD CITIZEN. 

I suppose the citizens will have a procession, 
and, if they do, I'll lend them the old blade my 
father wore at Yorktown, with a pair of Hes- 
sian boots, captured with his own hands from 
the owner, to carry as trophies above their 
banner ! 

THIRD CITIZEN. 

I wonder whether Crumb is stirring ? 

FOUBTH CITIZEN. 

I think not ; and if he were, he is but little 
of a speaker, and would thank us silently ; so 
let us give a good round shout, and leave. 



Agreed ! 



[They shout and retire. 



SCENE II. 
In front of Brisk' s house. 

BRISK. 

Beaten ! — After all our stratagems and 
schemings, the supper at Works's, the slan- 
der at the poll ; after enlisting the uttermost 
rank and file of the earth, invading the can- 
vass with the halt, the blind, the dumb, and the 
deaf, and threatening the inspectors themselves 
with infection — beaten ! — this is the very con- 
densed abstract and story of the whole matter. 

Enter Crowder. 
brisk. 
What say you to this, Crowder ? 

CROWDER. 

I say it's the greatest damper that has hap- 
pened since the flood. 

BRISK. 

I suppose it hasn't left you a cinder of spirit 
to contest the matter further ? You are com- 
pletely quenched. 



Not altogether ; I proposed to the committee 
to battle it before the canvassers, but they 
groaned at the suggestion like whipped hounds ; 
and, by the Lord, they are no better than curs, 
or they would have made a rush for the ballot- 
box last night ; the inspectors passed through a 
by-street, and it might have been as easily done 
as kissing a wench. 



Fie, fie, Crowder! — we must move gently; 
anything but a misdemeanor or open breach of 
law. You may scrawl on the glass as hard and 



as hard words as you choose, but you shall not, 
with my consent, make a flaw in it. 

CROWDER. 

The liberty-pole goes to the hammer at noon. 

BRISK. 

If that's all, let it pass ; it's nothing but a 
stick of timber. 

CROWDER. 

That's not all, for there's my assortment of 
trumpets and banners, besides my extra ward- 
robe of electioneering coats with false pockets 
and spread-eagle buttons ; my crutches for 
lame voters ; a box of green shades for blind 
ones, and my little book of facts in the private 
history of politicians. That's the most cruel 
levy. 



How, in the name of secrecy, were these things 
discovered by the officer ? 

CROWDER. 

Why, t e cursed rascal's a Gudgeonite, and 
instead of making a front-door levy, as a gen- 
tleman should, the villain came in with his ex- 
ecution through the scuttle, and the first drag 
he made was this precious cargo, which lay in 
a pantry in the garret. 

BRISK. 

Unfortunate, very unfortunate, Crowder. 

CROWDER. 

Barbarous enough, and I'm now bankrupt ; 
for, with that book in my hand, I could make 
myself acceptable to any set of politicians. But 
my day's over ; and now that I have exhausted 
my lungs and my ingenuity, in this election, to no 
purpose, I think I'll return to my original vo- 
cation, of manufacturing bellows-snouts and 
hoe-irons. [Retiring. 



I think you are well-advised in that. Politics 
is, after all, a poor trade ; but you shall always 
have my custom, Crowder. I need a new snout 
a year, and I have two country-brothers that 
I have no doubt will take a hoe a-piece annu- 
ally. Good day. [Exit crowder. 



Now that clamorous Tom Crowder is dis- 
posed of, what shall we do with cunning Jack 
Brisk ? Is he on his back — flat on his back, 
think you ? Cudgelled out of all his contrivan- 
ces, and beaten into the consistency of an addled 
egg — have his wits lost their saltnoss, ami the 
nimble blood that coursed through his brain 
turned into ditch-water ? Not exactly — not alto- 
together so. Zachary Crumb is alderman — old 
Zachary Crumb, and if I do not cozen his venera- 
ble understanding to my purpose, call me i stall- 
I herring. Why, hasn't he a vote in the council- 



46 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act V. 



chambers, the same as if John Brisk himself 
had been chosen ? I'll be the master of that 
vote, and, to gain that mastery, I'll humor the 
old curmudgeon's whims. He wishes this Hand- 
ing to marry my daughter Kate ; what reason- 
able objection can there be to that? Kate is 
rich by legacy, and is destined to wed some poor 
fellow without a farthing ; and why not this 
Blanding as well as another ? He is good-look- 
ing, they say, and accomplished. It seems 
feasible — very, extremely feasible. But there's 
Mr. Goss — hard to part with so distinguished a 
connexion; but the gruff dog, self-interest, 
shows his teeth, and we must part : I'll be 
quits with him by a plausible letter. 

[Exit BRISK. 

SCENE III. 

In front of Gudgeon's house. 

Gudgeon, Glib, and Botch. 

gudgeon. 

I thought it ill-advised — extremely ill-ad- 
vised, not to allow me to exhibit my person 
more prominently during the canvass. I am 
satisfied it must have turned the tide. 

BOTCH. 

It was only regard for your personal safety — 

GUDGEON. 

Regard for my personal safety, Botch ! Stuff! 
Have I not been called the fearless Gudgeon 
by resolution of a public meeting — and am I to 
be prevented from throwing myself into bold 
relief at a critical time ? Who says that Rob- 
ert Gudgeon should not have shown himself, 
like a man, at every conspicuous point, instead 
of being mewed up like a sick parrot, in a 
scanty room to receive hourly reports of the 
election ? 



If we had 'known that so much evangelical 
spirit was in you, we could have made a St. 
Stephen of you in a few minutes. 

GUDGEON. 

St. Stephen, St. Paul, and St. Book-of-the- 
Acts — what are they to me ? I am a plain man 
and no prophet, and, I can tell you this, mat- 
ters would have had a different ending if I had 
had my way. 



Why, sir, you had your own way about the 
walk with the drunkards, and I must confess 
you made an admirable thing of it. 

GUDGEON. 

You think I did— Eh ? 



Most admirable : first, you were dressed in 
capital taste ; your glaring buttons made you a 



mark a hundred yards cfT, and you shone like 
Orion with his stars all about him; then, you 
pitched this way and that way so excellently, 
as your two friends swayed, that many thought 
you all three a little in liquor. 

gudgeon. 

That was good — very good; but what did 
they say of my mode of taking snuff, as we 
turned the corner. 



Admirable ! They never saw a point more 
nicely turned, than your emptying the contents 
of the box into your own hand, and giving the 
lid to one and the bottom to the other ; it was 
the best practical joke they had ever witnessed. 

GUDGEON. 

So I thought myself; but that affair of the 
balcony was not managed as it should have 
been. When they cheered for Gudgeon, I should 
have stepped out and waved my hat ; and when 
they sent the oranges through the window, it 
would have been proper for me to pick them 
up and say, " Thank ye, gentlemen, I'll pre- 
sent these to Mrs. Gudgeon" — for that's the 
way I understood it. 

GLIB. 

It was a mere trick of the enemy, to draw 
you out and pelt you. 



And drench you, too ; for I saw a great two- 
handed fellow with a huge syringe, loaded with 
dyers' stuff— 

GUDGEON. 

They would never have dared to do it. The 
moment I had shown myself, they would have 
quailed like tame rabbits. Depend on it, that 
neglect at the balcony, and one or two like 
points, have been the death of us ; but I'll have 
satisfaction of Brisk, in one way. 

BOTCH. 

Heavens ! I wish that could be done ! 

GUDGEON. 

Botch, it shall be done. I'll have Blanding 
marry his daughter in spite of his teeth ; and 
that will play the mischief with his projects, 
or I'm an ass ! So Mrs. Gudgeon says. 

[Exeunt. 

SCENE IV. 

Crumb's house. 

Crumb and Brisk. 

crumb. 

This is certainly an age of miracles ; for in- 
stance, there is the old lady, my neighbor, 



Scene IV.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



147 



whose eyesight, that's heen impaired these five 
years, is so wonderfully improved by one of the 
great oculists of the day, that she can now even 
distinguish a bankrupt's carriage from the poor- 
house hearse, that's carrying his creditor to the 
grave ; an attorney from a tax-gatherer ; an of- 
ficer of police from a pickpocket, and a physi- 
cian from a criminal convicted at the Oyer and 
Terminer of a murder ! And now, at the tail 
of these wonders, comes John Brisk, and calls 
me alderman, and gives me the pleasure of his 
society as freely as a twin-brother. 



I admit this is something out of the custom- 
ary line of things ; but it is as a brother, a 
twin-brother, if you please, that I wait upon 
you to-day. 



"Well, here's a miracle greater than them all; 
a politician, who but yesterday was as busy as 
a pawnbroker's clerk putting out his greasy 
boxcoats after the first cold nip in November, 
and as noisy as the square a week after quar- 
ter-day, when all the old furniture in the town 
comes under the hammer to pay rent — this self- 
same roaring gentleman subsiding, to day, into 
the twin-brother — was it the twin-brother ? — 
of a decayed old man ! Oh ! its enough to 
burst one's heart with melancholy ! 



I hope you will be good enough to delay the 
bursting for the present, for I wish to enlist it's 
kind services in a business that I have very 
near my own heart. 



In any such business, if you could satisfy me 
of these conditions, I would be pleased to act. 



It's a business of a delicate nature, sir, and 
one in which you might scruple to be employ- 
ed. But it has agitated me a long time, and I 
must move in it, or be miserable. 

CRUMB. 

If the difficulty has not been more than a 
century growing, and be not larger than a 
mountain in size, I think something may be 
done. 



May I depend on you, sir ? — as brother de- 
pends on brother ? 



Perhaps you may. 



It will require your whole ingenuity and 
kindness steadily employed ; in a word, (whis- 
pering) I am anxious to bring about a union be- 
tween my daughter, Miss Catharine Brisk, and 



a young gentleman of great respectability, by 
the name of Blanding. 

CRUMB. 

Are yon assured of his respectability ? 

BRISK. 

Of that, there can be no question — not the 
slightest. 



Of what family of Blandings is he ? There 
is an upper family of that name and a lower, I 
think. With which does he class ? 



Upon my word, I never gave that a thought. 
The young man's merit is so predominant, I en- 
tirely lost sight of every such consideration, 
and if he had been born and reared in a cave, 
it would not have struck me very forcibly. 

crumb. (Pretending to remember.) 
Blanding, Blanding— is his Christian name 



Charles ? 



BRISK. 



It is, sir, and I had hopes you might know 
him ; in fact, I had some indistinct recollection 
of such a fact. 



Yes, yes— you have a sprightly memory, and 
you should cultivate it. But what kind of per- 
son has this young gentleman ? Is he comely f 



Oh, exceeding comely.— A picked man out of 
a thousand : a broad manly chest, a clear bold 
voice that rings like a trumpet, and a step and 
gesture full of majesty. He looks like one of 
the gods in the old painting. 

CRUMB. 

Hath he accomplishments ? 



There he lacks not— for on the flute, his fa 
vorite instrument, he plays ravishingly ; every 
breath is an achievement, and as you listen, 
you regard his stick as sacred, like a fragment 
of the cross, or a splinter brought from King 
Solomon's temple. I do believe if he had been 
Noah's grandson, and had played in the ark. it 
would have gone far toward assuaging the wild 
deluge. 



Now that you describe him so justly, I know 
the young man well. Iwill move him to second 
your wishes. 



I shall be most hnppy.- 
please. 



-Be urgent, if you 



148 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act V. 



I shall not neglect the proper means to im- 
press on him the match you propose. (Aside— 
Particularly as his mind is already unalter- 
ably fixed in its favor.) 



I shall regard it as a personal kindness of the 
highest obligation. 

CKUMB. 

It shall be speeded. 

BRISK. 

And will never forget the debt. 

CRUMB. 

(Aside — If I vote for your project in the com- 
mon council. I shall be satisfied if he pays the 
debt and relieves his memory of the burden of 
recollecting it !) It shall be looked to on the 
instant ; and you shall be freed quickly from 
your state of painful agitation. Sons-in-law 
grow on every bush, and I will out at once, sir, 
and pick one to your liking. 

[Exeunt severally. 

SCENE V. 

The open street. 

Gudgeon — to him, Enter Botch. 



It's all arranged, sir ; Goss is to marry Miss 
Kate Brisk to-day at twelve ; Tom Scissors, the 
attorney, is to be trustee of the estate for her 
benefit, and immediately after the deed is drawn 
and the dinner over, they start for the capitol. 

GUDGEON. 

Mark my word, if I am Robert Gudgeon, and 
not some impostor or other under that name, it 
shall all be disarranged, and not a particle of 
the whole matter shall fall out as you have 
described it. 



That would truly be a marvel 



are to have my coach about the corner in the 
neighborhood of Brisk's — the corner with the 
yellow front — precisely at eleven. 

BOTCH. 

Am I to tell William to grain the horses be- 
fore he comes out ? 

GUDGEON. 

Yes — let them be well filled with oats, for 
speed will be needful, and at the rendezvous 
punctually as the hall gives out eleven. — You 
will be stationed in the baker's yard, and when 
Mrs. Gudgeon shouts from Brisk's window, 
you will rush along the church fence and order 
William about with the carriage in front of 
Brisk's door. 



This will be fine sport — something should 
come of all this shouting. 

GUDGEON. 

Something shall come of it, for I will rush 
instantly up stairs — but after that I'll be pres- 
ent myself. Do you, Botch, be true to your 
time, and you shall see the upshot. 

[Exit GUDGEON. 



I think it will be worth something to see the 
upshot of all this. — I am to run along the 
church fence and up the steeple — no, not up 
the steeple, Mrs. Gudgeon does the steeple, 
and shouts from the window of Brisk's house ; 
and the coach-horses stuffed with oats run up 
stairs — or is it William that grains the horses 
and Mr. Gudgeon that runs up stairs ? No 
matter, I'll see the right of it before it's ended ! 

[Exit BOTCH. 

SCENE VI. 
Brisk's house. 

Brisk alone — Enter Servant. 

servant. 

The gentleman with the large whiskers is 
i below a sain, sir. 



I grant you the parties shaU be present at I * th ° U ? ht .J ^{ told , yoU \° r \connoitre 
Brisk's house as you have said, but there shaU j throu S h the side-light, and not admit him. 
be another there they have forgotten to invite ; j servant. 

and that will be Mrs. Margery Gudgeon, my ! , 1T ... . ,,' 4 "'/ lJ , . , 

own spouse. i sir ' us y surprise, by 

J ringing like the penny-post ; and now, sir, he's 
botch. | making his way up stairs like the colossus of 

That will make a very pretty little wedding 
of it! 



GUDGEON. 



Rhodes in the spelling-book. [Exit servant. 
Enter Blanding, as Jefferson Goss. 



BLANDING. 



Yes, a very pretty little wedding, Botch, but Good morning to you, Brisk— Up with the 
not exactly such a wedding as they contem- lark — eh ! — That's your sorts. I wish I had a 
plate. The manner of it shall be thus : you [ brace of the sky-scrapers broiled for a luncheon. 



Scene VI.] 



THE POLITICIANS. 



149 



BRISK. 

Why, really, sir, this is an unexpected plea- 
sure, after the letters I sent you. You must 
have received them, sir, for I sent them by my 
attorney's clerk, and he carries as true as a 
rifle. You must have misapprehended my 
meaning, sir. 

BLANDING. 

Not at all, sir — I wish to marry your 
daughter; you wish your daughter to marry 
me — and she agrees with both of us. 



You have misread my letter, sir. I there 
stated, that I regretted that a prior engagement 
prevented the honor of an alliance with you, 
and that I wished you to present my respects 
to your uncle, the senator, and name to him 
in the kindest possible way, that when he came 
in town to his public dinner, I would explain 
the business to his satisfaction. Did you read 
me so ? 

BLANDING. 

Something facetious of that sort, I confess, 
was handed to me — but it's all a joke, Brisk. 
Now confess, Brisk, you wrote under the in- 
fluence of excitement — the bottle, perhaps ? 

BRISK. 

Under the influence of the bottle, sir ! This 
is too much for you, even with your great con- 
nexions. Am I a dunghill fowl, that you fling 
your spurs at me in this way ? I'd have you 
know the Brisks have blood, sir — yes, blood — 
blood ; the Brisks of Bethpeg, sir, of Babylon, 
Jerico, and Hempstead, have as good veins as 
the president himself! — 

BLANDING. 

But, sir, the fun of the thing — 

BRISK. 

D n the fun ! 

BLANDING. 

And the senator's rage. 

BRISK. 

D n the senator's rage ! 

BLANDING. 

And my own feelings — 

BRISK. 



Enter Mrs. Gudgeon at one side, Kate Brisk 
at the other. 

MRS GUDGEON. 

Bless my stars ! here they are, and the dia- 
bolical tragedy will be perpetrated in a cock- 
crow. What a ferocious monster this Goss is ! 
I know him by the description. He looks for 
all the world like a buffalo that the droviers 
kept in my father's woods, and fed on acorns 



and heifers' milk. — I'll shout to Mr. Gudgeon. 
(Puts her head out at the window and calls) — 
Gudgeon ! Quick, or it will all be over — 
Gudgeon I 

Enter Crumb, 
brisk. 
Good-morrow, Alderman Crumb. 

CRUMB. 

Good-morrow, sir. — Ah ! a happy day to you, 
child. Blessed influences are abroad this morn- 
ing — and depend on it, they will shine here be- 
fore they set. 



(Aside — I wish I could get rid of this fel- 
low, Goss — He has fixed himself upon me like 
the stamp-act, and I'm afraid there'll be a devil 
of an insurrection before he will quit the coun- 
try.) But where's the bridegroom ? He travels 
slower than his tribe, not to be here by this 
time. 

CRUMB. 

Oh, sir, he will be here in good season, or 
there's no attraction in two fair planets. As- 
tronomy is at fault as well as witchcraft, if he 
tarries beyond the putting on of a glove-finger, 
or giving a new turn to his wedding-day smile 
in the looking-glass — (Blanding removes his 
whiskers, §c, while Brisk's back is towards 
him.) Behold him, sir ! 



Ah, son-in-law, I am happy, most sincerely 
happy to see you. You need not blush, for you 
have not come about a business that we do not 
all understand, and take an interest in. 

BLANDING. 

Thank you — My old friend, here, has ex- 
plained, I presume. 



Oh yes, he has explained all. Nothing could 
more exactly meet my wishes. From this day 
forth, I shall write myself down, " the content- 
ed man." 

crumb. (Aside.) 

If Greenwich lane cuts into the proper ave- 
nue ! Otherwise — the baffled manager ! 

Enter Gudgeon — after him, Botch, 
gudgeon. (Shouting.) 
I forbid the match ; I forbid the match. It's 
arson and burglary — He has broken in and 
stolen your daughter's affections, and he has 
set fire to her poor heart as he went out. Goss 
is an impostor, sir; it's a case for the police 
court. Besides, there will be murder added, 
for aught I know, for Botch, here, says poor 
Blanding is pining this very minute in a lone- 
some attic, and does nothing all day, but wrap 
his head in a COttOD handkerchief, and write 
sonnets and madrigals and pennyroyals. 



150 



THE POLITICIANS. 



[Act V. 



BOTCH. 

And I heard just now, as I came along, sir, 
that the neighbors were afraid he meditated 
something, because they have seen him several 
nights looking out of the skylight at the moon, 
and then running down the ladder and putting 
his quill in swifter motion over foolscap paper, 
than it ever had in the bird's wing — even when 
the bird itself was out of its wits with fright 
from a double-barrelled gun. 

BRISK. 

I knew something must come out — I was 
quite sure of it. — Mr. Gudgeon, my intended 
son-in-law, Charles Blanding. 

GUDGEON. 

Your intended son in-law ! That was just 
what I had my carriage got up for — and a chap- 
lain waiting at St. Thomas's — and Botch run- 
ning about all the morning to effect : that very 
connexion in the family. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

There's witchcraft and petit larceny in this 
business, as Mr. Gudgeon guessed : for Goss 
was here a minute ago, and he has stolen off 
with himself; and Blanding wasn't here a min- 
ute ago, and he has come out of the earth, like 
Samuel's ghost for the witch of Endor. 

CRUMB. 

A very pretty witch of Endor, too, you must 
allow, has conjured him up : but there's no 
ghost here, Mr. Brisk — so don't tremble — it's 
only the senator's nephew. 

KATE. 

Nor any Charles Blanding : one of the Gosses 
of Cross River, Mrs. Gudgeon. You are as 
familiar with him as a blood relation ; but it 
must be very cold blood, for he has almost 
petrified you. 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Now, Kate, I knew all the time — there was 
something about the eyes that said they didn't 
belong to that family. I suspected it was 
Charles Blanding, all the time. 

BLANDING. 

Will it be worth while, Mr. Brisk, to deliver 
this letter to the senator — when I see him ? 



Yes — when you see him : for I suppose he is 
as imaginary as his own nephew. — I deserve 
to be buried in lead for my stupidity in not see- 
ing through this before ; but it was your vora- 
city at the table that deceived me — I confided 
in that to establish your character. It might 
have deluded any one into the belief in your 
congressional connexions — might it not, Mr. 
Crumb ? 

CRUMB. 

It might unquestionably ; particularly if, as 



Blanding informs me, he was vociferous about 
port wine and canvass-backs. 



Yes, and Long Island cranberries in the bed 
or in hothouses ? and mutton raised on the 
senator's farm. That overturned my sagacity, 
I admit : it was enough, you must all confess 
— for was there ever an American great man, 
that hadn't his flocks of Merinoes and Durhams 
and Derbyshires — his long naps and short naps, 
as well as his public dinners and premeditated 
extemporaneous speeches ! 

MRS. GUDGEON. 

Happiness be with you, children ! and that 
you may start with the true principle of matri- 
mony — compromise — I shall make Mr. Gudgeon 
let you have his snug two-storied house in the 
suburbs, where you, Kate, can look out upon 
green fields, grasshoppers, and chirping birds, 
and rivulets ; and you, Charles, by mounting 
to the upper windows or the roof, can catch 
frequent glimpses of city buildings, citizens, and 
gashouse smoke, and can even steal a glance 
into Broadway and its fantastic crowds. On 
the one side you will be visited by the farmer 
with fresh eggs and asparagus, and on the other 
by the taxgatherer with his annual demand, and 
the captain's orderly with his half-yearly notice 
of parade. 

BRISK. 

And to be able to entertain these gentleman, 
and others of their fraternity, such as duns and 
milliners, Kate shall be invested with her own 
property forthwith. Glib shall prepare the 
papers. 

CRUMB. 

It would be unkind to have Mr. Gudgeon's 
morning industry count for nothing, so with his 
consent we will call his carriage, which I saw 
at the corner, pack our party in, and relieve 
the chaplain at St. Thomas's from the painful 
state of suspense which he must be in by this 
time ; unless the fee was paid in advance. 

GUDGEON. 

I took that precaution, sir. 

BRISK. 

That was lucky, and we shall all be happy 
without a drawback. 

CRUMB. 

And now I think, we are all agreed on one 
point ; — whatever wranglings or differences 
may distract houses of congress or legislature, 
may the debates of this young house be always 
kindly, and have happy issues ! Whatever suf- 
frages may be cast for other " Politicians" out 
of doors, may we always have your votes (to 
the audience) at the end of the evening's can- 
vass in favor of the candidates we venture to 
present. 



THE END OF THE POLITICIANS. 



POEMS ON MAN, 



IN HIS VARIOUS ASPECTS UNDER 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



POEMS ON MAN, 

IN HIS VARIOUS ASPECTS UNDER 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



i 

THE CHILD. 

Calm, in Ihy cradle lie, thou little Child, 
Thy white limbs smoothing in a patient sleep, 
Or, gambolling when thou wakest at the peep 

Of the young day — as clear and undefiled 

As thou ! Around thy fresh and lowly bed 
Look up and see, how reverent men are 

gathered, 
In wonder at a babe so greatly fathered 

Into life, and so by influence fed. 

They watch the quiet of thy deep blue eye — 
Where all the outward world is born anew, 
Where habit, figure, form, complexion, hue 

Rise up and live again in that pure sky ; 

At every lifting of thine arms, they feel 

The ribbed and vasty bulk of Empire shake, 
And from the fashion of thy features take 

The hope and image of the common-weal. 

See ! through the white skin beats the ruddy tide! 
The pulses of thine heart, that come and go, 
Like the great circles of the ocean-flow, 

And dash a continent at either side. 

Thou wield'st a hopeful Empire, large and fair, 
With sceptred strength : about thy brow is set 
A fresh glad crown, with dewy morning wet, 

And noon-day lingers in thy flaxen hair ! 

Kingdom, authority and power to thee 

Belong ; the hand that frees, the chain that 

thralls- 
Each attribute on various man that falls, 

Strides he the globe, or canvass-tents the sea : 

The sword, the staff, the judge's cap of death, 
The ruler's robe, the treasurer's key of gold, 
All growths the world-wide scope of life 
may hold, 

Are formed in thee and people in thy breath. 

Be stirred or still, as prompts thy beating heart ! 

Out of thy slumbering calmness there shall 
climb, 

Spirits serene and true against the Time 
That trumpets men to an heroic part ; 
And motion shall confirm thee, rough or mild 

For the full sway that unto thee belongs, 

In the still house or 'mid the massy throngs 
Of life — thou gentle and thou sovereign Child ! 



II. 

THE FATHER. 

Behold thyself renewed ! But think not there 

A slave or suppliant lies ; nor on him bow 
Thy curious looks, as if another heir 
Had sprung to bear about thy civil brow 
public streets — thy sober suit to wear : 
n all things to obey, in all to trust — 
', when thy time has past and his ensues, 
je-like to track thee downward in the dust. 

See, rather, from the little lids looks out 

A soul distinct and sphered, its own true star, 
Shining and axled for a separate way, 

Be its young orbit's courses near or far. 
His little hands uplifted for his right 

To have an individual life allowed — 
Implore of men, of men, from thee the first, 

The freedom by his birth-right hour bestowed. 

Check not, nor hamper with an idle chain, 

With customs harsh, of a loose leisure grown, 
With habitudes of craft, of health or pain 

The youngling life that asks to be its own : 
His early friend, his helper and his guide 

To stay his hold upon the rugged way — 
Turn not that life-branch from the sun or shade 
aside, 

But in heaven's breezes, rather, let it go 
astray. 

Be thou a Heaven of truth and cheerful hope, 

Clear as the clear, round midnight at its full ; 
And he, the Earth beneath that elder cope — 

And each 'gainsteach for highest mastery pull: 
The child and father, each shall fitly be— 

Hope in the evening vanward paling down, 
The one — the other younger Hope upspringing, 

With the glancing morning for its crown. 

There is no tyranny in truest love, 

Nor rightful mastery in triumphant force ; 
And gentleness at hearth and board will prove 

Felicity is born of their divorce: 
Father and Child, the after and before, 

Latest or first, whatever matters it ? 
Of mutual hopes, of mutual fears and loves, 

Rounded and firm, their strands of life are 
knit. 



154 



MAN IX THE REPUBLIC. 



III. 

THE TEACHER. 

With reverent steps approach the soul that lies 

Before thee, rude, unformed and full of life ; 
A chaos shrouding up a future world — 

To order horn — yet with itself at strife. 
Peer for a while within the dark domain, 

And see how temples mighty spring to sight, 
Arks, palaces — all dead or living things 

Doomed to climb up into the Heaven's light, 
To heap the Earth or sail the outward Sea ; 

The giant mass of things to come at large, 
Hovering about and shaping silently 

Within that baby soul's unquiet marge.* 

In beauty shall that fresh-girt spirit build ? 

Shall harmony through all its chambers sing — 
While rising day by day, and pile on pile, 

Its topless worlds of heaven-ward wonders 
spring ? 
Say thou — that broodest on its infant breast ! 

Whose eyes cry light through all its dawn- 
ing void — 
Or, with a double darkness would invest 

Young thoughts, on labor without hope I 
employed. 
'Tis there the tru est work Earth knows is done — ! 

Each hour, each instant buys the world an age 
With glory bright : knits up its golden peace, | 

Or rends the web of time with endless rage. 



And, far-withdrawn within their stainless 
breast, 
Deliver thence, at times, a blessed oracle. 



IV. 



THE CITIZEN. 

With plainness in thy daily pathway walk — 
And disencumbered of excess : no other 

Jostling, servile to none, none overstalk, 
For, right and left, who passes is thy brother. 

Let him who in thy countenance looks, 
Find there in meek and softened majesty, 

Thy Country writ, thy Brother and thy God ; 
And be each motion, forthright, calm and free. 

Feel well with the poised ballot in thy hand, 
Thine unmatched sov'reignty of right and 
wrong — 

'Tis thine to bless, or blast the waiting land, 
To shorten up its life or make it long. 

Who looks on thee, not hopeless, should behold, 
A self-delivered, self-supported Man ; 

True to his being's mighty purpose — true 
To a wisdom-blessed — a god-given plan. 

No where within the great globe's skyey round — 
Canst thou escape thy duty, grand and high, 

A man unbadged, unbonneted, unbound — 
W r alk to the Tropic— to the Desert fly. 

; • A full-fraught Hope upon thy shoulder leans, 
And beats with thine, the heart of half the 
world ; 
Ever behind thee walks the shining Past, 
Before thee burns the star-stripe, high 
unfurled. 



Bend to the Teacher, bend, oh world, thy knees! 

And pray him, blessed God's name, to "be true 
Lest he for ever break that spirit's precious 
peace, 

And following millions in its fall undo. 
A consecrated man — thou man of thought — 

Keep clear thy master-soul in every act, 
And be thy features pure as early light — 

Crossing in power that spirit's undimmed 
tract. 
The world's dust ever shake from off thy feet, 

When drawest thou to that white temple near, THE FAR ME 

Nor vex its amber cope with words unmeet 

Of hate, or anger harsh, or unblest fear. FuLL master of the i^^ soil he treadSj 

With none to tithe, to crop, to third his beds 
Listen the way the spirit seeks to go — Of ripely-glowing fruit or yellow grain— 

And watch its sacred steps, or firm or frail ; ' He knows what freedom is ; undulled of pain 
Haste not its pace, nor hinder it the path — Looks on the sun and on the wheatfield looks, 

Smiling or sad, in changeful mirth or wail, Each glad and golden in the other's view 
Remember, thou art standing by thy God ! 
Ere Earth has soiled his beauty, touched his 
strength : 
'Tis there th' Almighty makes his sweet abode ; 
And there, if undisturbed, would Heaven at 
length 
Take up and fix its everlasting rest : 
Yea, Heaven with these, its children, fain 
would dwell, 



And in such indexes .... 

there is seen 

The baby figure of the giant mass 

Of things to come at large. Troil. and Cressid. 



Or, on the meadow listening to the sky 
That bids its grasses thrive with starry dew. 

To him there come in such still places, 

Undimmed, majestical and fresh as life, 
The elder forms, the antique mighty faces 

Which shone in council, stood aloft in strife — 
When went the battle, billowy, past ; 

When high the standard to the sky was raised ; 
When rushed the horsemen with the rushing 
blast, 

And the red sword through shrouded valleys 
blazed. 



MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



155 



When Cities rising shake th' Atlantic shore— 

Thou mighty Inland, calm with plenteous 
peace, 
Oh temper and assuage the wild uproar, 

And bring the sick, vexed masses balmy ease. 
On their red vision like an angel gleam, 

And angel-like be heard amid their cries 
Till they are stilled as is the summer's stream, 

Majestical and still as summer skies. 

When cloud-like whirling through the stormy 
State 

Fierce Revolutions rush in wild-orbed haste, 
On the still highway stay their darkling course, 

And soothe with gentle airs their fiery breast; 
Slaking the anger of their chariot-wheels 

In the coolflowings of the mountain brook, 
While from the cloud the heavenward prophet 
casts 

His mantle's peace, and shines his better look. 

Better to watch the live-long day 

The clouds that come and go 
Wearying the heaven they idle through, 
And fretting out its everlasting blue — 

Than prowl through streets and sleep in 
hungry dens 
The beast should own, though known and 

named as men's ; 
Though sadness on the woods may often lie, 

And, wither to a waste the meadowy land — 
Pure blows the air — and purer shines the sky, 

For nearer always to Heaven's gate ye stand ! 



VI. 



THE MECHANIC. 

O, when thou walkest by the river's brink, 

Thy bulky figure outlined in the wave, 
Or, on thine adze-staff resting, 'neath the ship 
Thy strokes have shaped, or hear'st thou 
loud and brave 
The clangor of the boastful forge — Think not 
To strength of limb, to sinews large and tough, 
Are given rights masterless and vantage-proof, 
The sad, pale scholar and his puny hand 
Idling his thoughts upon the idle sand, 
May not possess as full : oh, maddened, drink 

not 
With greedy ear what selfish Passion pours : 
His a sway peculiar is, no less than yours. 

The inner world is his ; the outer thine — 
(And both are God's) — a world, maiden and 
new, 
To shape and finish forth, of iron and wood, 
Of rock and brass, to fashion, mould and 
hew — 
In countless cunning forms to re-create — 
Till the great God of order shall proclaim 
it " Good !" 
Proportioned fair, as in its first estate. 



Let consecrate, whate'er it strikes, each blow — 
From the small whisper of the tinkling smith, 

Up to the big-voiced sledge that heaving slow 
Roars 'gainst the massy bar, and tears 
Its entrail, glowing, as with angry teeth — 

Anchors that hold a world should thus-wise 
grow. 

In the First Builder's gracious spirit work, 
Through hall, through enginery, and temples 

meek, 
In grandeur towered, or lapsing, beauty-sleek, 

Let order and creative fitness shine : 
Though mountains are no more to rear, 
Though woods may rise again no more ; 

The noble task to re-produce is thine ! 

The spreading branch — the firm-set peak may 
live 

With thee, and in thy well-sped labors thrive. 

The untried forces of the air, the earth, the sea, 

Wait at thy bidding : oh, compel their powers 
To uses holy ! Let them ever be 

Servants to tend and bless these new-found 
bowers ; 
And make them household workers, free and 
swift, 

On daily use — on daily service bent : 
Her face again old Eden may uplift, 

And God look down the open firmament. 



VII. 
THE MERCHANT. 

Who gathers income in the narrow street, 
Or, climbing, reaps it from the roughening 
sea — 
His anchor Truth should fix — should fill his 
flowing sheet, 
His weapon, helm and staff the Truth should 
be. 
Wrought out with lies each rafter of thine house, 
Black with the falsehood every thread thou 
wearest — 
A subtle ruin, sudden overthrow, 

For all thy household's fortune thou preparest. 

Undimmed the man should through the trader 
shine, 

And show the soul unbabied by his craft : 
Slight duties may not lessen but adorn, 

The cedar's berries round the cedar's shaft. 
The pettiest act will lift the doer up, 

The mightiest cast him swift and headlong 
down ; 
If one forget the spirit of his deed, 

The other wears it as a living crown. 

A e:race, be sure, in all true duty dwells ; 

Humble or high, you always know it thus, 
For beautiful in act, the foregone thought 

Confirms its truth though seeming-ominous. 



156 



MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



Pure hands and just, may therefore, well be laid 
On duties daily as the air we breathe ; 

And Heaven amid the thorns of harshest Trade 
The laurel of its gentlest love may wreathe. 



vin. 

THE SOLDIER. 

With grounded arms, and silent as the moun- 
tains, 

Pause for thy quarrel at the marbled sea : 
And, when comes the ship o'er the curled wave 
bounding, 

Remember that a brother in a foe may be. 
Thy battles are not wars but self-defences, 

Girding this Universal Home about — 
Least lion-wrong and subtle-fanged pretences 

Pierce to its heart and let the life-hope out. 

Though sleeps the war-blade in the amorous 
sheath, 
And the dumb cannon stretches at his 
leisure — 
When strikes the shore a hostile foot — out- 
breathe 
Ye grim, loud guns — ye fierce swords work 
your pleasure ! 
And sternly, in your stubborn socket set, 
For life or death — your hilt upon the stead- 
fast land, 
Your glance upon the foe, thou sure-set bayonet, 
Firm 'gainst a world's shock in your fast- 
ness stand ! 

This, this, remember still, thou son of war — 

The child of peace within his doorway seated 
Thine equal is — though beats the luring drum 
afar, 
Or flies the meteor column, battle-heated. 
Lo, in the calmness of that silent man, 

And in the peaceful sky-arch o'er him 
bending, 
A pure repose — a more triumphal span 

Than sees the death-field 'mid its storms 
ascending. 



IX. 



THE STATESMAN. 

Up to the Capitol who goes, a heart 

Should bear, state tyranny may not subdue : 
Wakening at dawn to fill its ample part, 

It, ever, day by day, grows fresh and new, 
Nor sleeps through the mid-watches of the night, 

Though there the thankless world has left 
its smart — 
Without some visions, beckoning and bright, 

That make him gladly to his bedside start. 



Accursed who on the Mount of Rulers sits 

Nor gains some glimpses of a fairer day ! 
Who knows not there, what there his soul befits, 

Thoughts that leap up and kindle far away 
The coming time ! Who rather dulls the ear 

With brawling discord and a cloud of words ; 
Owning no hopeful object, far or near, 

Save what the universal self affords. 

He that with sway of empire would control 

The various millions, parted or amassed, 
Should hold in bounteous fee, an ample soul — 

Equal the first to know, nor less the last. 
At once whose general eye surveys as well 

The rank or desert waste — the golden field ; 
Whose feet the mountain and the valley tread, 

Nor ever to the trials of the way will yield. 

Deeper to feel, than quickly to express — 

And then alone in the consummate act — 
Reaps not the ocean, nor the free air tills, 

But keeps within his own peculiar tract : 
Confirms the State in all its needful right, 

Nor strives to draw within its general 
bound — 
For gain or loss, for glory or distress, 

The rich man's hoard, the poor man's patchy 
ground. 

Strip from the trunk that props the empire up, 

All weeds, all flowers that hide the simple 
shaft : 
Plain as the heavens and pure as mid-day light 

Swell up its ample cope : nor there ingraft 
A single leaf nor draw a single line 

To daze the eye, to coax the grasper's hand ; 
Simple it rose — so simple let it rise — 

For ever, changeless simple let it stand ! 



X. 

THE FRIEND. 

In fortune, quality and temper mated — 
Let spirit, spirit choose — each suited best 
To th' other's moving mind or mind at rest ; 

In kinship nearer than red blood related. 

No castled shadow falls upon the heart, 

Darkening two faces each turned unto the 

other, 
No lowly roof shuts in or out the heart's 
true brother : 
Life deals to each, with equal chance, an equal 
part. 

With mutual talk— of kingdoms past and gone, 
Of Rome republic-strong, and emperored 

Rome, 
Of Venice in her heart-struck days of doom- 
Old Israel pure, and scarlet Babylon ; 

Of muniments to guard a free-born State, 
And ships built proof against the world's 
worst shock, 






MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



157 



Of battles won, white-handed peace to rock 
The coming age, — they share a mutual fate. 

Sweet is the counsel of two noble souls ! 

Where sleeps no lie of thought with art 
concealed 

Beneath the blood, nor in the face revealed : 
Friendship goes oftenest down on secret shoals ! 



XI. 

THE PAINTER. 

A spirit moving through the Universe, 

On Heaven's errand or his own Nature's 
pure behest, 

"Would feed the beauty of his living wings 
On the free air, and on the sunset bright 

And on the dawning morn ; should a later quest 
Detain him far through the heart of night, 
Some darker tints might creep across the light, 

Or a chill splendor, of the moonbeams born, 

Dying in gloom or wakening into morn. 

Lighting by chance amid the haunts of men — 
Though yearning to get purely forth again — 
Their dusty shouts would not sully, but renew 
Rather, the glory when it had wandered through. 
To pause beneath a mountain, should he choose, 
Its shadows would be portion of the many 
hues : — 
And, up returning to his hearth-sky post, 
And, dwelling, once again, within his 
native coast, 
The mountain and the sea, the setting sun, 
The storm, the face of men, and the calm moon 
Would live again upon the pictured vans and 
in the glowing crest 
Of that High Spirit, moving or at rest. 

Be, thou, oh Painter, various, pure and free, 

As Heaven's boundless and wide-winged 
minister : 

Moving abroad, thy spirit let confer 
With whispering beauty, born of Earth, of 

Air or Sea. 
Look on the earth that breaks about thy feet, 

In valleys and in mountains starry : 
Look on the woods, amid whose colored bowers, 

The dark bright seasons, else departed, tarry. 
See Heaven shining through the pale blue sky 

On some fair day of dreamy summer, 
Smiling upon a gentle hour just dead, 

Or kindling welcome for a gentler comer. 

Are there no spirits, kin to light and beauty, 
Springing to cheer these sweet and suited 
haunts ? 
Faces of love and forms of eldest duty, 

Which, unexpressed, the soul thereafter 
pants ? 
Fill thou, the mansion of thy Father-land 
With hues to gladden in its hours of need, 
With glancing shapes that every fairness 
breed, 
And pour a larger life from thy creative hand ! 



XII. 
THE SCULPTOR. 

Leap up into the light, ye living Forms ! 

And plant 'mid men your birthright feet ; 
Angry and fierce as the maned thunder's storms, 

And as the lightning beautiful and fleet. 
Of quick and thoughtful souls the truest 
thoughts, 

Born of the marble at Heaven's happy hour — 
Ye blessed Realities ! who strike the doubts 

Begot of speech, dumb, with your better 
power. 

Human and life-like with no sense of pain, 
Come forth, crowned heroes of the early age, 
Chieftain and soldier, senator and sage — 

Benignant, wise and brave again ! 
Would the soul clothe itself in elder gloom — 

Let stand upon the cliff and in the shadowy 
grove, 
The tawny ancient of the warrior race, 
With dusky limb and flushing face, 
Diffusing Autumn through the stilly place— 

For battle stern, or soothed for love. 

Or should a spirit of a larger scope 
Seek to express itself in sacred stone : 

Cast, life-long, on the mountain-slope 
Or seat upon the starry mountain-cone, 

Colossal and resigned, the gloomy gods 

Eying at large their lost abodes, 

Towering and swart and knit in every limb, 
With brows on which the tempest lives, 
With eyes wherein the past survives ; 

Gloomy and battailous and grim. 

Think not too much what other climes have 
done, 
What other ages : with painful following, 
weary, 
Each step thou takest darkens thy natural sun, 
And makes thy coming course, thy by-gone, 
dreary. 
Let the soul in thee lift its awful front, 

Facing the Universe that stands before it ; 
Beaten by day and night and tempests' brunt, 
All shapes — all glorious passions shall cross 
o'er it. 
Forth from their midst some forms will leap 

That other souls have never disencumbered, 
And up shall spring through all the broad-set 
land, 
The fair white people of thy love unnumbered. 



XIII. 
THE JOURNALIST. 

As shakes the canvass of a thousand ships, 
Struck by a heavy land-breeze, far if sea— 

Ruflle the thousand broad-sheets of the land, 
Filled with the people's breath of potency ; 



158 



MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



A thousand images the hour will take, 
From him who strikes, who rules, who speaks, 
who sings ; 

Many within the hour their grave to make- 
Many to live, far in the heart of things. 

A dark-dyed spirit he who coins the time, 
To virtue's wrong, in base disloyal lies — 

Who makes the morning's breath, the evening's 
tide, 
The utterer of his blighting forgeries. 

How beautiful who scatters, wide and free, 
The gold-bright seeds of loved and loving 
truth ! 

By whose perpetual hand, each day, supplied — 
Leaps to new life the empire's heart of youth. 

To know the instant and to speak it true, 
Its passing lights of joy, its dark, sad cloud, 

To fix upon the unnumbered gazers' view, 
Is to thy ready hand's broad strength allowed. 

There is an in-wrought life in every hour, 
Fit to be chronicled at large and told — 

*Tis thine to pluck to light its secret power, 
And on the air its many-colored heart unfold. 

The angel that in sand-dropped minutes lives, 
Demands a message cautious as the ages — 

Who stuns, with dusk-red words of hate, his ear, 
That mighty power to boundless wrath 
enrages. 

Hell not the quiet of a Chosen Land, 

Thou grimy man over thine engine bending ; 

The spirit pent that breathes the life into its 
limbs, 
Docile for love is tyrannous in rending. 

Obey, Rhinoceros ! an infant's hand, 

Leviathan ! obey the fisher mild and young, 

Vexed Ocean ! smile, for on thy broad-beat 
sand 
The little curlew pipes his shrilly song. 



XIV. 

THE MASSES. 

When, wild and high, the uproar swells 
From crowds that gather at the set of day ; 
When square and market roar in stormy play, 
And fields of men, like lions, shake their fells 
Of savage hair ; when, quick and deep, call 
out the bells 

Through all the lower Heaven ringing, 
As if an earthquake's shock 
The city's base should rock, 
And set its troubled turrets singing : — 
Remember, Men ! on massy strength relying, 
There is a heart of right 
Not always open to the light, 
Secret and still and force-defying. 



In vast assemblies calm, let order rule, 
And, every shout a cadence owning, 
Make musical the vexed wind's moaning, 

And be as little children at a singing-school. 

But, when, thick as night, the sky is crusted o'er, 
Stifling life's pulse and making Heaven an 
idle dream, 
Arise ! and cry, up through the dark, to God'a 
own throne : 
Your faces in a furnace glow, 
Your arms uplifted for the death-ward blow — 
Fiery and prompt as angry angels show : 
Then draw the brand and fire the thunder-gun ! 
Be nothing said and all things done ! 

Till every cobwebbed corner of the common- 
weal 
Is shaken free, and, creeping to its scabbard 
back the steel, 
Let's shine again God's rightful sun ! 



XV. 

THE REFORMER. 

Man of the Future ! on the eager headland 
standing, 
Gazing far off into the outer sea, 
Thine eye, the darkness and the billows rough 
commanding, 
Beholds a shore, bright as the Heaven itself 

may be; 
Where temples, cities, homes and haunts 

of men, 
Orchards and fields spread out in orderly 
array, 
Invite the yearning soul to thither flee, 
And there to spend in boundless peace its 
happier day, 

By passion and the force of earnest throught, 
Borne up and platformed at a height, 

Where 'gainst thy feet the force of earth and 
heaven are brought ; 

Yet, so into the frame of empire wrought, 
Thou, stout man, can'st not thence be severed, 

Till ruled and rulers, fiends or men, are taught 
And feel the truths by thee delivered. 

Seize by its horns the shaggy Past, 

Full of uncleanness ; Heave with mountain 

cast, 
Its carcase down the black and wide abyss — 
That opens day and night its gulfy precipice, 
By faded empires, projects old and dead 
For ever in its noisy hunger fed : 

But rush not, therefore, with a brutish blindness 
Against the 'stablished bulwarks of the world; 

Kind be thyself although unkindness 

Thy race to ruin dark and suffering long, 
has hurled. 

For many days of light, and smooth repose, 
Twixt storm and weathery sadness inter- 
vene — 



MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



159 



Thy course is Nature's ; on thy triumph flows, 
Assured, like hers, though noiseless and 
serene. 

Wake not at midnight and proclaim the day, 
When lightning only flashes o'er the way : 
Pauses and starts and strivings towards an end, 
Are not a birth, although a god's birth they 
portend. 
Be patient therefore like the old broad earth 
That bears the guilty up, and through the 
night 

Conducts them gently to the dawning light — 
Thy silent hours shall have as great a birth ! 



XVI. 
THE POOR MAN. 

Free paths and open tracts about us lie, 
'Gainst Fortune's spite, though deadliest to 
undo : 

On him who droops beneath the saddest sky, 
Hopes of a better time must flicker through. 

No yoke that evil hours would on him lay, 
Can bow to earth his unreturning look ; 

The ample fields through which he plods his way 
Are but his belter Fortune's open book. 

hough the dark smithy's stains becloud his 

brow, 
His limbs the dank and sallow dungeon claim ; 
The forge's light may take the halo's glow, 
An angel knock the fetters from his frame. 

In deepest needs he never should forget 

The patient Triumph that beside him walks, 

Waiting the hour, to earnest labor set, 

When, face to face, his merrier Fortune talks. 

Plant in thy breast a measureless content, 
Thou Poor Man, cramped with want or 
racked with pain, 

Good Providence, on no harsh purpose bent, 
Has brought thee there, to lead thee back 



No other bondage is upon thee cast [hand ; 

Save that wrought out by thine own erring 
By thine own act, alone, thine image placed — 

Poorest or President, choose thou to stand. 

A man — a man through all thy trials show ! 

Thy feet against a soil that never yielded 
Other than life, to him that struck a rightful blow 

In shop or street, warring or peaceful-fielded ! 



XVII. 

THE SCHOLAR. 

Bosomed in peace and far apart from crowds — 
Who sits till hands grow wan and eyes grow 

dim, 
Pausing his pulse and stirring not a limb, 
Though paling fast toward the dead man's 
shrouds ? 



'Tis thou, 'tis thou — thou foolish scholar's 

heart — [flows, 

Forgetting round thee what a world there 

How, ever in and out, its mighty eddy goes — 

And yet thou sittest on its edge, so still, apart. 

Who thinks that dull dead books have deepest 
life, 

Calls them by names of awed delight or 
gladness, [ness, 

With one or other argues with a joyful mad- 
And with the tidiest pillows for a wife ? 
Oh, thou poor, idle moon-struck heart of youth — 

Has the keen air no better wit brought to thee ; 

This folly in this land will sure undo thee — 
In spite of nobleness and worth, of gentlest truth! 

Go cast these follies in the barren sea : 
Seal up, for ever seal, the hateful leaves, 
And turn thine eyes where light no more 
bereaves [free. 

Their orbs, and lift thine arms up strong and 

Away, away all gentle thoughts shall glide, 
All happiest fancies night or morning born; — 
It may be thou wil't feel awhile forlorn, 

And drop, one day, unmissed, beneath the 
hurrying tide ! 



XVIII. 
THE PREACHER. 

Ever aslant the sky behold a shape, 

Leaning at length upon the mastered air! 
Man-like in form and yet divinely fair, 

About his head a golden glory glows, 

And fair as morning every feature shows. 
His feet are toward the earth, and upward 
thrown 

His stretched and yearning arms appeal to God ; 

With God he talks at that far height— with 
God alone. 

Athwart all troubles of the day or night or 
clouds, [tempest's shrouds — 

Athwart eclipse of sun or moon, or the dun 
Behold that radiant figure streaming, 

'Twixt Earth and Heaven, and Heaven and 
Earth, [infant at its birth, 

An angel mighty — meek as the swathed 
All the mid-region from its gloom redeeming. 
'Tis Christ, 't is sacred Christ who there is 
beaming. [pie-wall 

Oh, ye who sentried stand upon the tern- 
Holy, and nearer to the glory's golden fall — 

Moon-like possess and shed at large its rays — 
The wide world knitting in a web of light, 
Whose every thread the gladd'ning truth 
makes bright ; 
Peace, love and universal brotherhood, 
Good will to man and faith in God the good. 
Withered be he, the false one of the brood, 
Who, husbandman of evil, scatters strife, 
Bramblinsj and harsh, upon the held of life: 
But deeper cursed whose secret hand 



160 



MAN IN THE REPUBLIC. 



Plucks on to doom the safeguards of the land, 
Freedom, and civil forms and sacred Rights 
That conscience owns : he, conscience-stung, 
who plights 
His voice 'gainst these, should sheer-down fall 
From off the glory of the temple-wall, 
Smitten by God as false to truth and love 
And all the sacred links that bind the heavens 
above 
And man beneath : a withered Paul, 
Apostleless, beyond recall ! 

Rather, with blessings and the bonds of life 
Let Heaven's good workman bind together 

The house that roofs us on this dear, dear plot 
of earth, 
An arbor in the genial sun, 
A stronghold in the tyrannous weather : 

Kindly and loving brothren every one, 
All equal — all alike who thither tend, 
Where all may dwell together without end — 

And as our course must be, so let it be begun. 

But shrink not, therefore, from the coward age, 

That shows, in mockery shows, its hideous 

face at times, [sabbath-chimes ; 

And crosses with its cursed din the very 

0, smite and buffet with a holy rage 
Its brassy cheeks and brow of icy coldness — 
Dash and confound it with the storm-cloud's 
boldness [trembles, 

That frowns and speaks till every house-roof 
And face to face no more dissembles 
The God-fear coiled within the crusted heart ! 
Brandish the truth and let its four-edged dart 
Cut to the quick, and, cut through every armor, 
Unbosom to the light the Satan-charmer ! 

Ye holy Voices sphered in middle air ! 
Lower than angels, nor as they so fair, 
Yet quiring God's behest with truth and 
power — 

Pitch your blest speech, or high or low, 

That angels may its language own and know, 
Through the round Heaven to which it rises, 
And ever on the earth may fall in glad surprises, 
The spring-sweet music of a sudden shower. 

Heaven shall bless thee and the earth shall 

bless, 

And up through the close, dark death-hour 

thou shall spring [wing — 

With fragrant parting, and heaven-cleaving 

To ask, nor ask in vain, thy Christ's caress ! 



XIX. 
THE POET. 

The mighty heart that holds the world at full, 
Lodging in one embrace the father and the 

child, 
The toiler, reaper, sufferer, rough or mild, 

All kin of earth, can rightly ne'er grow dull ; 

For on it tasks, in this late age, are laid 
That stir its pulses at a thousand points ; 

Its ruddy haunts a thousand hopes invade, 



And Fear runs close to smutch what Hope 
anoints. 
On thee, the mount, the valley and the sea, 
The forge, the field, the household call on thee. 

Men — bountiful as trees in every field, 

Men — striving each, a separate billow, to be 
seen, 
Men — to whose eyes a later truth revealed 

Dazzling, cry out in anguish quick and keen, 
Ask to be championed in their newborn thoughts, 

To have an utterance adequate and bold — 
Ask that the age's dull sepulchral stone 

Back from their Saviour's burial-place be 
rolled : 
All pressing to be heard — all lay on thee 
Their cause, and make their love the joyful fee. 

There sits not in the wildernesses 5 edge, 

In the dusk lodges of the wintry North, 
Nor crouches in the rice-field's slimy sedge — 

Nor on the cold, wide waters ventures forth — 
Who waits not in the pauses of his toil, 

With hope that spirits in the air may sing ; 
Who upward turns not, at propitious times, 

Breathless, his silent features listening : 
In desert and in lodge, on marsh and main, 
To feed his hungry heart and conquer pain. 

To strike or bear, to conquer or to yield, 

Teach thou ! O, topmost crown of duty, teach 
What fancy whispers to the listening ear, 

At hours, when tongue nor taint of care im- 
peach 
The fruitful calm of greatly silent hearts ; 

When all the stars for happy thought are set, 
And, in the secret chambers of the soul, 

All blessed powers of joyful truth are met. 
Though calm and garlandless thou may'st 

appear, 
The world shall know thee for its crowned seer. 

Mirth in an open eye may sit as well, 

As sadness in a close and sober face : 
In thy broad welcome both may fitly dwell, 

Nor jostle either from its nestling-place. 
Tears, free as showers, to thee may come as 
blessed, 

As smiling, of the happy sunshine born, 
And cloaked-up trouble, in his turn, caressed 

Be taught to look a little less forlorn ; 
Thy heart-gates, mighty, open either way, 
Come they to feast or go they forth to pray. 

Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm 

To speak a common tongue in thee ! Be thou — 
Heart, pulse, and voice, whether pent hate 
o'erwhelm 

The stormy speech or young love whisper low. 
Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum ! 

Forth, truth-mailed, to the old unconquered 
field— 
And lure them gently to a laurelled home, 

In notes softer than lutes or viols yield. 
Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath, 
Closing their lids, bestow a dirge-like death ! 



WAKONDAH, THE MASTER OF LIFE. 



" We have already noticed the superstitious feelings with which the Indians regarded the 
Black Hills; but this immense range of mountains (the Chippewyan or Rocky Mountains) 
which divides all that they know of the world and gives birth to such mighty rivers, is still 
more an object of awe and veneration. They call it, "The Crest of the World," and think 
that Wakondah or the Master of Life, as they designate the Supreme Being, has his residence 
among these aerial heights."-— Astoria, Vol. I., p. 265. 



WAKONDAH, THE MASTER OF LIFE. 



7n 



[The following stanzas are to be received as 
the incomplete (and, no doubt, very imperfect), 
fragment of a work, which opportunity and a 
mood, equal to what seems to the author the 
requirements of the subject, could alone con- 
clude. This portion is published, with the hope 
that the author might feel himself, in its further 
progress, borne forward by something of the 
friendly impulse that grows from favor, and 
should not turn back, heart-smitten, to find that 
his was the only eye which dwelt with cheerful 
regard upon the ample look-out of its Future.] 

I. 

The Moon ascends the vaulted sky to-night ; 
With a slow motion full of pomp ascends, 
But mightier than the Moon that o'er it bends 
A Form is dwelling on the mountain height 
'T'hat boldly intercepts the struggling light — 
/ "With darkness nobler than the planet's fire : 
A gloom and dreadful grandeur that aspire 
To match the cheerful Heaven's far-shining 
might. 

II. 

Great God ! how fearful to the gazing eye ! 
Behold the bow that o'er his shoulder hangs, 
But ah ! winged with what agonies and pangs 

Must arrows from its sounding bow-string fly; — 

An arc of death and warfare in the sky. 

He plants a spear upon the rock that clangs 
Like thunder ; and a blood-red token hangs, 

A death-dawn, on its point aspiring high. 

III. 

Upon his brow a garland of the woods he wear3, 
A crown of oak leaves broader than their wont; 
Above his dark eye waves and dims its brunt — 

Its feathers darker than a thousand Fears — 

A cruel eagle's plume : High, high it rears, 
Nor ever did the bird's rash youth surmount 
A pitch of power like that o'ershadowed front 

On which the plume its storm-like station bears. 

IV. 

Filled with the glory thus above him rolled — 
How would some Chinook wandering through 

the night 
In cedern helm and elk-skin armor dight 
Be pierced with blank amazement dumb and 
cold : 



How, fear-struck, scan the Spirit's awful 
mould ; — 
The gloomy front, the death-dispelling eye, 
And bulk that swallows up the sea-blue sky — 

Tall as the unconcluded tower of old. 

V. 

Transcendant Shape ! But hark, for lo a sound 
Like that of rivers and of mingled winds 
Through forests raging 'till the tumult finds 

Or makes an outlet free from hedge or bound, — 

Breaks from the Holder of the mountain-ground. 
Oh, listen sadly to the urgent cry ! — 
No mightier shadow of a strength gone by 

Through the whole perishable Earth is found. 

VI. 

The Spirit lowers and speaks : " Tremble ye 
wild Woods ! 
Ye Cataracts ! your organ-voices sound ! 
Deep Crags, in earth by massy tenures bound, 
Oh, Earthquake, level flat ! The peace that 

broods 
Above this world and steadfastly eludes 

Your power, howl Winds and break ;— the 

peace that mocks 
Dismay 'mid silent streams and voiceless 
rocks — 
Through wildernesses, cliffs and solitudes. 

VII. 

" Night-shadowed Rivers— lift your dusky hands 
And clap them harshly with a sullen roar ! 
Ye thousand Pinnacles and Steeps deplore 

The glory that departs ! Above you stands 

Ye Lakes with azure waves and snowy strands, 
A Power that utters forth his loud behest 
Till mountain, lake and river shall attest 

The puissance of a Master's large commands !" 

VIII. 

Sq sn ake the Spirit, with a wide-cast look 
Of bounteous power and cheerful majesty | 
As if he caught a sight of either sea 

And all the subject realm between : — Then shook 

His brandished arms, his stature scarce could 
brook, 
Its confine ; swelling wide, it seemed to ?row 
As grows a cedar on a mountain's brow 

By the mad air in raffling breezes took. 



164 



WAKONDAH ; THE MASTER OF LIFE. 



IX. 

The woods are deaf and will not be aroused — 
The mountains are asleep, they hear him not, 
Nor from deep-founded silence can be wrought, 

Tho' herded bison on their steeps have browsed : 

Beneath their banks in darksome stillness housed 
The rivers loiter like a calm-bound sea ; 
In anchored nuptials to dumb apathy 

Cliff, wilderness, and solitude, are spoused. 

X. 

Then shone afar Wakondah's dreadful eyes, 
With fire and lurid splendor, like the stars 
That dazzle earth belolding them ; — the wars 

That noble spirits wage with enemies, 

Flash in his aspect through its cloudy guise ; — 
His tower-high stature quakes in all its parts, 
And from his brow a mighty sorrow starts — 

A sorrow mightier than the midnight skies. 

XI. 

" Oh, wherefore tremble ? Wherefore should 
I fear 

Because these creatures now, by chance, 
are dumb, 

Nor longer to my bidding with obeisance come;. 
As when, in times to startle and revere, 
Templed on high within this cloudy sphere, 

With wondering worship of the dusky wood — 

The quivered stream, the dark-eyed solitude — 
I stamped my image on the rolling year. 

XII. 

" At eve or morn whene'er I walked these hills 
From ridge to ridge they shook, from peak 

to peak ; 
A thousand warrior tribes that dare not speak 

Lay in my shadow with the awe that chills, 

Dumb with the fear that boundless force instils. 
Wakondah was a god and thunderer then, 
Nor bent his bow nor launched his shafts in 
vain — 

Lord of each power that terrifies or thrills. 

XIII. 

" Your dark foundations felt my framing hand ; 
Nor can your sun-smote summits e'er forget 
By whom their flood-resisting roots were set — 

By whose clear skill their skyey power was 
planned. 

Through all the borders of the lofty land — 
Mountains ! I call upon you to attest 
Whose habitable wish upon your crest 

Reared up his throne and fixed his Godhead 
stand. 

XIV. 

" My spirit stretched itself from East to West, 
With a winged terror or a mighty joy ; 
And, when his matchless bow-shafts would 
annoy, 
I urged the dark red hunter in his quest 
Of pard or panther with a gloomy zest, 



And while through darkling woods they 

swiftly fare — 
Two seeming creatures of the oak-shadowed 

air, 
I sped the game and fired the follower's breast. 

XV. 

" Outsounding with my thunder thy loud vaunt, 
Thou, too, hastknown me, mighty Cataract ! — 
When rocks in headlong motion thou hast 
tracked, 

Like some huge creature goaded from his haunt, 

Along the mountain passes rough and slaunt — 
Who makes his foaming way while all around 
He awes the circuit with a shuddering 
sound : — 

Soragest Thou and lift'st Thy sounding front !" 

XVI. 

Power crumbles from the arm, and from the brow 
Glory declines with surety swift as light : 

\ Like towers that loose in storms their 
\ wondrous might, 

Dark principalities of air must bow 

And have their strength and terror smitten low : 
The hour draws nigh, Wakondah, when on 

thine 
Yon full orbed fire unpaled,shall cease to shine 

Uplifted longer in Heaven's western glow ! 

XVII. 

" Lo ! where our foe up through these vales 
ascends, 
Fresh from the embraces of the swelling sea, 
A glorious, white and shining Deity. 

Upon our strength his deep blue eye he bends, 

With threatenings full of thought and steadfast 
ends, 
While desolation from his nostril breathes, 
His glittering rage he scornfully unsheathes 

And to the startled air its splendor lends. 

XVIII. 

" The nation-queller in their length of days — 
The slaughterer of the tribes art thou ! the 

rude 
Remorseless, vengeful foe of natural blood 

And wood-born strength reared up amid the maze 

Of forest walks and unimprisoned ways ; — 
The dwellers in unsteepled wastes ; the host 
Of warriors stark and cityless, whose boast 

Was daring proof 'gainst torture that betrays." 

XIX. 

Oh wrestle not, Wakondah, with the Time 
The Time resistless in its present hou^ 
Of rugged force, of multitudinous power 

To make itself triumphant o'er the clime, 

Where streams are endless, mountains as sublime 
And valleys shadowy and calm as ever 
Yet tasked a Godhead's high and bright en- 
deavor, 

Since first the world was in its mighty prime. 



WAKONDAH ; THE MASTER OF LIFE. 



165 



XX. 

Far through the desert, see his fiery hoof 
Speeds like the pale white courser of St. John, 
With rage and dreadful uproar thundering on ! 

At every step old shadows fly aloof, 

While on and on he bounds with strength enough 
To master valley, hill and echoing plain — 
Cheered by the outcry of a savage train 

Of white-browed hunters armed in deadly'proof. 

XXI. 

" Through the far shadows of the gathering 
years 

I see, visions denied to mortal eyes ; 

Phantoms of dreadful aspect that arise 
Cold with the anguish of their wintry fears ; 
And struggling forth from out a gulf of tears 

And blood by banded nations vainly shed, 

Above them all a single Wo its head 
Lifts high and awes its customary peers. 

XXII. 

" I say not now what name that Wo shall bear, 
What mournful omen on its front is written, 
What pillared glories by its sad rage smitten — 

Shall fall to earth, and all th' embracing air 

With its dread sound of wasting tumult tear; 
These are the future's — voiceless let them rest 
Deep in the shadow of her silent breast, 

Till vengeance bid the sons of men— Prepare !" 

XXIII. 

So spake the Spirit ; but I deemed I saw 
That in the language of his gloomy eye, 
That made a falsehood of his augury. 

I know that Heaven is true to its great law ; 

I know how deep and damnable a flaw 

Has through its righteous code of truth been 

rent 
By erring swords and hands with blood 
besprent — 

And this it is that fills my soul with awe. 

XXIV. 

And yet, oh God ! I dare to ask of thee 
Pardon and palmy days for this dear land ; 
The glory of thy sun, thy shadowing hand, 

In mercy spread abroad from sea to sea, 

That all its wide vast empire so may be, 
From loud Atlantic unto Oregon 
An orb of power, and never to be won 

Nor yielded up, a home and fortress to the free ! 

XXV. 

" The past is past !" Wakondah spoke " the past 
Is past : to others lifeless, cold and dumb 
Beyond repeal, I bid it's shadows come 

Swiftly before rne, nor care I how vast 

That which 1 gendered shall appear at last 
As when at first it's dim colossal form, 
Huge, rude, mis-shapen, noisy as a storm — 

Rose up, by me called upward and amassed. 



XXVI. 

" Falling or rising through the azure air — 
Green dells that into silence stretch away ; 
Ye woods that counterfeit the hues of day 
With colors e'en the day could not repair 
From his wide fount of morning dyes and fair 

Evening or noon ; innumerous rampant life 
With which this waste or verdant world is rife — 
As yet were not; the offspring of a god-like care. 

XXVII. 

"Oh,backwardhow that youthfulglory gleams — 
Ye creatures of my undiminished arm, 
When shadowing hills were lifted like a charm, 

And at a word their duly measured beams 

Sprung to their chambers in the mountain seams. 
This was no task-work, nor a toil of joy 
Thus an immortal puissance to employ 

In building worlds and pouring ocean-streams. 

XXVIII. 

" Oh ! might and beauty of the forming earth — 
Shaped hy a hand upholding and divine, 
For such was then Wakondah even thine ! — • 

With hill and mountain masses bursting forth, 

And struggling all along the blue-aired North — 
With smiling valleys winding far between, 
And rivers singing all aloud, though yet 
unseen : 

While I, their sire, hung joyous o'er their birth. 

XXIX 

" A fearful and a perilous joy was mine, 
When brooding thus above the seething world 
I saw the striving giants swiftly hurled, 

With thunderous noises to and fro ; a constant 
line 

Of furnaced lightnings, ever forced to shine 

Quick, fierce and kindling through the shape- 
less gloom, 
Made the dull void some creature disentomb, 

And cheered its birth-pangs with a fire benign. 

XXX. 

" What voice of portent shook the gulf that held 
The uncreated majesty of woods, 
The calm deep beauty of the solitudes 

Of boundless fields ; and from the deep compelled 

That Behemoth, whose roar has lately quelled 
Nations in panoply of arms arrayed ? 
Amid the sounding mass and undismayed 

By striving rivers, shock of hills impelled 

XXXI. 

" 'Gainst hills and wild beasts raging into light, 
Wakondah stood, and o'er the tumult bent, 
It's Ruler and it's steadfast fnmamcnt. 
He breaks the bondage of the cruel Night 
Thai wraps them in its folds, and like a plight 
Of storm* thai rage and thunder but t.» lave 
And purity, he burst your roek-riblxd grave — 

The matchless Master of redeeming might.*'— 



166 



WAKONDAH ; THE MASTER OF LIFE. 



XXXII. 

The Spirit ceased and all along the air, 

From where in speechless majesty he stood — 
On either hand through all the solitude 

Of glittering peaks and dusky vales, to where 

The wild beasts held afar their anxious lair — 
A sudden silence like a tempest fell ; 
A silence and a gloom that none can tell — 

A calm too dread for mortal things to bear. 

XXXIII. 

No cloud was on the moon, yet on His brow 
A deepening shadow fell, and on his knees 
That shook like tempest stricken mountain- 
trees, 

His heavy head descended sad and low : 



Like a high city smitten by the blow 

That secret earthquakes strike and toppling 

falls 
With all its arches, towers and cathedrals, 

In swift and unconjectured overthrow. 



XXXIV. 

Thenceforth I did not see the Spirit lift 

Again that night his great discrowned head, 
Nor heard a voice : He was not with the dead 

Nor with the living, for the mighty gift 

Of boundless power was passing like a rift 
Of stormy clouds that still will have a tongue 
Ere yet the winds have wafted them along 

To endless silence, whitherward they drift. 



THE END OF WAKONDAH. 



THE CAREER OF 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



THE CAREER OF 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



PREFACE. 

It was the hope of the author when he began the 
following work, that he might be able to produce a 
book, in some slight degree, characteristic and na- 
tional in its features. Now, that it is completed, he 
fears it may be found far short of that hope, and 
unequal even to his own feeble purposes. He had 
a design which seemed, in some of its circumstan- 
ces, to partake a little of utility and truth, but 
which, he is afraid, is not made quite so clear to 
the reader. 

Where he has attempted to shade and soften, he 
may have blurred ; and where he would have cut 
sharp lines and effected contrasts, it may prove 
that he has merely mangled character and story. 
Imperfect as is his own judgment in such a case, 
he thinks he can discover one or two places at 
least, where more should have been said and less 
done ; or more done and less said. He wishes only 
that he had sufficient influence with the reader to 
persuade him to guard against a single false alarm 
frequently raised against works of this class. The 
constancy with which the charge of caricaturing 
Nature is brought against writers who attempt the 
humorous, should lead us to suspect — particularly 
as Cervantes, Smollett, Fielding, and Scott, to say 
nothing of more recent eminent examples, have ali, 
at one time or another, been included in the accu- 
sation — that there is less justice and more assump- 
tion in the charge, than seems at first possible. 

These authors all wrote from a sure instinct, a 
profound knowledge of their art. They knew very 
well, or must have early learned, that the spirit of 
the accusation would drive all literature upon a ser- 
vile transcript of every-day objects, and most ef- 
fectually stifle every work claiming to be a work 
of art. It was their province, they knew, to dis- 
cover in nature the germe of character, and to ex- 
pand it by processes of which genius is master, in- 
to a livelier, truer development than nature, in her 
ordinary moods, presents. To group, to separate, 
to soften and elevate nature, is allowed to the au- 
thor as well as the painter ; and the charge of 
caricaturing should be brought only where Nature 
is lost sight of and fails to furnish the original sta- 
ple out of which the product is wrought. 

It happened to the author, during the progress of 
the early parts of this Tale through the pages of a 
magazine (Arcturus), to be engaged in the advo- 
cacy of a law of International Copyright ; a cause 
which he will not fail to urge at all proper oppor- 
tunities. As it was not found altogether conveni- 
ent to answer what he advanced, an attack was 
made, by a new sort of evasive logic, upon the pres- 
ent worlc. What kind of generalship it would he 
to set out with the valiant purpose of the conquest 
of Mexico and proceed to its execution by march- 



ing a couple of thousand miles in directly the op- 
posite course, and opening a brisk cannonade upon 
the Heights of Abraham, for example — the reader 
may determine. The author only expresses a 
wish that the work may be judged by itself, 
apart from collateral issues and distracting person- 
alities. In that spirit he believes it will be judged 
by all fair-minded and capable critics. Whatever 
the issue may be, he can not altogether regret that 
he has written it, since it has afforded him an op- 
portunity to serve, in a very humble way, objects 
of which he. ought not to be ashamed. 
New York, Oct. 28th, 1842. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PLATFORM. 



To say that the townspeople of this mighty 
metropolis were in a state of greater excitement 
and activity on a certain night in a certain 
month of November — which it is not necessary 
more particularly to define — than they are on 
certain other nights of periodical recurrence, 
would be to do the said townspeople arrant in- 
justice, and to establish for the chronicler of 
the following authentic history, at the very 
outset, a questionable character for truth and 
plain speaking. On this immediate occasion, 
however, there was, it must be confessed, a 
commendable degree of agitation and enthu- 
siasm visible, in almost every quarter of the 
city. Crowds were emerging from lane, alley, 
and thoroughfare, and pouring into the central 
streets in the direction of the Hall ; sometimes 
in knots of three, four, or more, all engaged in 
earnest conversation, in a loud key, with vehe- 
ment gesture, and faces considerably discolored 
by excitement. The persons composing these 
various peripatetic and deliberative groups, 
could not be said to be of any single class or pro- 
fession, but mingled together indiscriminately, 
much after the fashion of a country storekeepers 
stock, where a bale of fourth-price flannel 
neighbors a piece of first-quality linen, and 
knots of dainty and gallant wine-glass. 
brought into a state of sociable confusion, with 

a gathering of hard-headed plebeian stone bot- 
tles. Although all tending the same way and 
on the same errand, let no man be so rash and 



170 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



intemperate as to imagine that no distinctions 
were observed ; that certain lines and demar- 
cations were not maintained ; and that broad- 
cloth was not careful here, as usual, not to have 
its fine nap destroyed by the jostling of homespun. 

The knot of tough-fisted mechanics kept its 
course, roaring out its rough sarcasms and great 
gusts of invective, while the company of well- 
dressed gentlemen bound for the same harbor, 
glided more quietly along, their talk scarcely 
disturbed by the extravagance of a rippling 
phrase or an oath. 

Here a substantial citizen advanced in great 
state and dignity, alone, toward the place of 
gathering, unless his horn-topped walking-stick 
might be held as suitable company for so grave 
and dignified a personage ; and again a thought- 
ful young gentleman might be discovered, stri- 
ding along with his hands thrust deep in his 
pockets, conning a few common-places for a 
speech. 

This various crowd has at length reached its 
destination, and scampering up the stairs of a 
large mis-shapen building, with no little heat 
and racket, finds itself landed in a spacious 
saloon, facing a raised platform, protected in 
front by a rough railing, with some score of 
vacant chairs occupying the floor of the same, 
and as many stout candles ranged against the 
rail. Beneath the platform is a small square 
table, holding a capacious inkstand, ornamented 
with two or three huge gray goose-quills. 
Abreast of the table are stretched a number of 
rude benches, to afford accommodation for such 
infirm, ease-loving, and sedentary individuals, 
as may see fit to take possession of them ; and 
taken possession of they are at a very early 
stage of the proceedings, first by a squad of 
precocious shipwrights' 'prentices, secondly by 
a broad-bottomed dairyman who was left at the 
Hall in the afternoon by one of his own wagons 
from Bloomingdale, and thirdly by a rout of 
scrambling fellows, from no place in particular, 
who push and jostle and clamor their best for 
the occupancy. The meeting is on the eve of 
being organized, when in marches a well-fed 
uppish man — the very citizen that was alone 
with his cane in the street — who, contempla- 
ting the crowd with an air of austere regard, 
urges himself toward one end of the platform, 
where he meets a scraggy man, smartly dressed, 
and displaying from the pillory of a sharp-edged 
clean shirt-collar, a very knowing countenance 
extended to the audience, and engages in a 
whispered conversation, the concluding clause 
whereof embodies this sterling sentiment (en- 
forced by the thrusting of a roll at the same 
time into the open hand of the scraggy gentle- 
man) : " There's a current ten — make me a 
vice, will ye ?" The scraggy man thereupon 
cocks his eye significantly, and the stout citi- 
zen, slipping away, gets into the outskirts of 
the crowd, where he stares at the platform and 
the candles — the political heaven of ambitious 
stout gentlemen — as if they were the most re- 
markable objects in creation, and as if he was 



perfectly unconscious of the objects for whicn 
the meeting was then and there convened. 

In due time the meeting was called to order, 
and the innocent stout gentleman established 
himself, with five others, upon the platform, as 
an assistant presiding officer — a vice — of the 
same. Silence was proclaimed, and a dwarfish 
little man, with one of the oddest countenances 
in the world, was lifted upon a high stool by 
the mob, and commenced reading a manuscript, 
which he dignified with the name of the " Re- 
port of the Anti- Aqueduct Committee, appoint- 
ed by the citizens of New York, at a large and 
respectable meeting held at Fogfire Hall," &c, 
&c, in which was furnished a certain amount 
of statistics (taken from the 'Cyclopedia) : a 
decoction of mouldy jokes (from the news- 
papers) : and a modicum of energetic slang — a 
direct emanation from the inventive genius of 
the reader of the report. 

This was a great, a tremendous question — 
suggested the Anti-Aqueduct manuscript — a 
question, to come to the point at once, invol- 
ving the rights of mankind, the interests of 
universal humanity. If this principle was al- 
lowed to pass unopposed — this pernicious prin- 
ciple of setting up pure water, democratic 
Adam's ale, the true corporation gin, for pur- 
chase — where would we land? The commit- 
tee that drafted the report could tell 'em ! — 
in tyranny, despotism, bloodshed, and debauch- 
ery. Individuals would get drunk at the pump, 
as soon as the price was made an object : there 
was a consideration for them ! The people 
had their rights — here the reader wagged his 
head vehemently, and grinned like a demon 
just going out of his senses — he could tell them, 
and the people could take care of 'em. 

A general dissemination of genuine gin cock- 
tails among the hearers, could have scarcely 
produced greater excitement than did this most 
apposite and thrilling sentiment : caps flew up, 
and hats flew off, as if the air were alive with 
great black insects, and canes came down with 
a general crash, like a cane-brake itself in a 
state of tornado. It seemed as if they never 
would be done applauding this happy allusion ; 
and the committee-man stood on the stool, sway- 
ing on one leg, and smiling, as if he considered 
it the most agreeable spectacle he had ever 
enjoyed. The committee did not suppose that 
it was the purpose of Providence to destroy 
mankind by a second flood, but they were satis- 
fied, morally satisfied, if such an intention ever 
did come within the purview of the divine dis- 
pleasure, the object would undoubtedly be ac- 
complished by the bursting of the reservoir 
which it was proposed to erect at the junction 
of the Third Avenue and Bowery : at least, 
the committee thought it proper to add, as far 
as the citizens of New York were concerned. 
And so the report rambled on, like an echo 
among the Dutch hills, until it finally died 
away in a thundering resolution, and the little 
reader was inadvertently knocked off the stool 
by a charcoal- vender, who was employed, be- 



PUFFER HOPKINS 



171 



sides grinning through the sable stains of his 
trade in a ghastly manner, in swinging his hat 
in approval of one of the concluding sentiments 
of his report. 

The charcoal-man was hustled, the little 
committee-man set upon his legs, and a vote 
of thanks unanimously passed for the able re- 
port just read. 

A very long, dull-looking man, next offered 
a resolution, and delivered a speech as long and 
dull as himself; which resolution and speech 
were seconded by a round, heavy man, in an 
harangue quite as rigmarole and ponderose ; — 
when a pause occurred, during which the mob 
seemed to be reflecting what they should do 
next. After a proper degree of cogitation, they 
commenced shouting for a favorite speaker, 
who always interested their feelings by propo- 
sing a general division of property : which was 
very liberal in him, as he had nothing to divide 
but the payment of two-score old debts, and 
the expenses of a small family ; but he failed 
to make his appearance. Upon which certain 
sagacious persons began peering about in the 
crowd, as if they expected to find him sand- 
wiched away snugly among the carmen, om- 
nibus-drivers, and stevedores, there present. 
Certain other active persons were despatched 
into the halls and purlieus of the building ; a 
self-formed committee of five rushed post-haste 
for the bar-room ; and one over-zealous indi- 
vidual was so far carried away by his enthu- 
siasm, as to run a mile to the orator's dwelling, 
and there to demand his person with such 
breathless incoherence, as to lead his small 
family to suspect that their dear protector and 
paymaster harbored the intention of making 
way with himself. 

A second popular favorite was called by the 
audience; the same scrutiny instituted, and 
with the same result. Affairs now looked ex- 
ceedingly blank, the audience began to despair, 
and to entertain the horrible expectation of 
having to go to bed speechless, when an un- 
known individual pushed convulsively through 
the crowd, struggled up the steps, and placed 
himself at the foot of the platform, and stretch- 
ing out his right arm to its full extent, began. 

He was young — the bloom of roseate health 
upon his cheek would satisfy them of that. He 
was timid and doubtful : witness his tremblings 
and shiverings on presenting himself for the 
first time before that highly respectable body 
of august citizens. He was rash and fool- 
hardy, he was aware, in coming before so in- 
telligent an audience, at that critical moment. 
But he was actuated and impelled by a sense of 
duty, which would not allow him to be silent 
while that great question called for an advo- 
cate. They had heard (he thunder of the can- 
non, in the report; the braying (a slight titter 
at this word) of trumpets, in the speeches of 
the two learned gentlemen that had preceded 
him ; and now that the grand overture of battle 
had been performed, he ventured to come upon 
the field, and with his simple shepherd's pipe 



to sound the humbler music of peace. He 
trusted that no violent, no vindictive feeling, 
would be indulged toward their opponents. 
Let their measure pass — let the aqueduct be 
reared, and let its waters begin to flow : — from 
these very waters, pernicious as they seemed, 
should be drawn the rainbow of promise for his 
friends ; for the friends of cheap government 
and good order ! Taxation was not democracy ; 
debt was not democracy ; public ruin and bank- 
ruptcy were not democracy (gently warbled the 
shepherd's pipe) : and if this insane, wolfish, 
and reckless party wished to destroy itself with 
its own fangs — why, in God's name, bid them 
God-speed, and give them a clear field. He 
would not suggest that the farmers in West- 
chester county should oppose the passage of the 
aqueduct through their own lands ; they were 
freemen and knew what was what. He would 
not stir up the Harlaem Bridge Company 
(Heaven forbid !) to withstand this encroach- 
ment upon their rights ; they were a corpora- 
tion, and could discriminate carrot from horse- 
radish. He hoped, he fervently and sincerely 
hoped and trusted, that the entire race of 
water-rats and ground-moles might be annihi- 
lated, before the undertaking was commenced ; 
so that it might not be impeded or undermined 
by their operations. At these various hopes 
and suggestions, as they were delivered, there 
was an uproarious ha ! ha ! uttered by the as- 
semblage, who seemed to relish them hugely ; 
and, with a hint or two to the audience, not to 
allow themselves to be tampered with — not to 
look on and see their heads taken from their 
shoulders, and the bread from their children's 
mouths (all of which was heartily seconded by 
the hearers), the young orator — the gentle 
friend of peace — stepped from the platform. 

At the conclusion of the speech, some one in 
the crowd jumped up a foot or two, and shout- 
ed, " Three cheers for the last speech !" and 
three cheers were given with great animation ; 
and then, at the same suggestion, three more ; 
and three at the end of them. Different mem- 
bers of the audience turned to each other and 
shook hands, and exclaimed, " Royal," ** That 
was fine," and other like phrases of approba- 
tion ; and then inquiries were set on foot as 
to the name of the new speaker, to which no 
one could furnish a satisfactory answer; and 
whether he was from this ward or that ward, 
which was in a state of equal doubt and uncer- 
tainty; and finally it was conjectured and sug- 
gested, that he didn't belong to any ward at all, 
but had come from the country, which they 
were for proving by his rural simile of the 
rainbow (rainbows not being indigenous in in- 
corporated towns), and his intimate acquaint' 
ance with the feelings of the Westehester 
county fanners and ground-moles. 

Whatever might be his Dame and origin, his 
foot had no sooner touched the floor, than he 
felt his sleeve twitched, and turning, he discov- 
ered a singular-looking little gentleman. 
oninr him to follow. 



172 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



CHAPTER II. 

FIEST ACQUAINTANCE WITH HOBBLESHANK. 

Disengaging himself from the crowd at 
Fogfire Hall, the young politician followed his 
unknown conductor into the open air. From 
the rapidity with which he moved in advance, 
although his gait was shuffling and uncertain, 
he was not fairly overtaken until he had 
reached the mouth of a neighboring refectory, 
at which, pausing only for an instant glance at 
the young man's countenance — which seemed 
to create a pleasurable feeling, and caused him 
to smile strenuously — he plunged down the 
steps. The young politician followed, and 
found himself in a close, narrow room, the air 
of which was musty with confinement, and 
having no opportunity from the pent place 
where it was imprisoned, to ramble about 
among meadows and fresh streams to enliven 
itself, depended on fumes of brandy and clouds 
of cigar-smoke, for whatever life it exhibited. 
A tall man stood before the fire, who would 
have inevitably perished of its noxious quali- 
ties if he had not taken occasion, through the 
day, to stand up the steps with his head and 
shoulders above ground, contemplating the 
clay-covered wagons that came in fresh from 
the country. 

Judging from the starved, narrow-breasted 
skeletons of turkeys and fowls, the cold, sepul- 
chral hams, the cadaverous, shrunken legs of 
mutton, and the dwarfed tarts and bread-rolls, 
that lay in miserable heaps on the table, they 
might have easily concluded that the piehouse 
into which they had descended was the dreary 
family-vault, to which melancholy butchers, 
bakers, and poulterers, were in the habit of 
consigning such of their professional progeny as 
had ceased to have life and merchantable quali- 
ties on earth. The room was, of all possible 
dirty rooms, the dirtiest. With walls smoked 
and tallow-stained ; an un sanded floor ; tables 
spotted all over, like the double-six of domi- 
noes, and a fire with just enough animation to 
blush at the other appointments of the place. 
The piehouse had its pretensions, too ; for it 
possessed not only a common room for outside 
customers, but a private parlor, snug and se- 
lect, cut off from its vulgar neighbor by elegant 
blue curtains, made to resemble patches of 
dirty blue sky — moving on a wire with jingling 
brass rings, and entered by a half-raised step. 

Upon this, which was little more than a 
large stall, after all, they entered. The myste- 
rious little gentleman, drawing the curtains be- 
hind them, rushed up to the fire and rubbed his 
hands together over the blaze, opened the cur- 
tains, thrust out his head, called for oysters and 
beer, and took his station at one side of the ta- 
ble in the middle of the floor. " It's all right," 
said the stranger. " Don't be alarmed ; my 
name is Hobbleshank — what's yours ?" 

" Puffer Hopkins," replied the young politi- 



cian, surveying more closely his whimsical com- 
panion. 

He was an irregularly-built little gentleman, 
about fifty-five years of age, with a pale face, 
twitched out of shape somewhat by a paralytic 
affection ; with one sound eye, and one in a 
condition of semi-transpaiency, which gave to 
his features something of a ghostly or goblin 
character ; and hedging in, and heightening the 
effect of the whole, a pair of bushy black whis- 
kers, of a fine, vigorous growth. The little 
gentleman wore a faded blue frock, short pan- 
taloons, low shoes, an eyeglass, and a hat con- 
siderably dilapidated and impaired by age. 

The singularity and whim of the little old 
gentleman's demeanor was shown in his sham- 
bling up sideways toward Puffer whenever he 
addressed him, and looking up timidly, first 
with the doubtful eye, as if sounding his way, 
and then with the sound one, fortifying himself, 
from time to time, from an immense snuff-box, 
which he carried awkwardly in his left hand. 

" That was an excellent speech, young man !" 
said the strange little gentleman, dropping into 
a seat, and simultaneously swallowing an oys- 
ter, black with pepper. 

" I trust the sentiments were correct," mod- 
estly suggested his companion. 

" Never better, sir ; sound as a Newtown- 
pippin, to the core," continued the strange lit- 
tle gentleman. " But you are young yet, sir — 
quite young — and have a thing or two to learn. 
Be good enough not to advance upon the stage 
again, if you please, without your coat but- 
toned snug to the chin, which shows that you 
mean to give them a resolute speech — a devil- 
ish resolute speech," exclaimed the little gen- 
tleman, glaring on the youth with his spectre 
eye, " full of storm and thunder, sir ; or else 
with your breasts thrown wide back, indicating 
that you are about to regale them with an airy, 
well-ventilated, and very candid effusion." 

Appreciating the interest that the little old 
gentleman expressed in his future success, his 
companion promised to comply, as far as in him 
lay, with these new requisitions in the art of 
addressing public bodies. 

'" There was an awful omission," continued 
the strange gentleman, " a very awful and un- 
pardonable omission, in your harangue to- 
night." The little old gentleman's voice sound- 
ed sepulchral, and his companion cast his eyes 
anxiously about the select parlor. 

" For Heaven's sake, what was that, sir ?" 
asked the young gentleman, regarding his cen- 
sor with intense interest. 

" Why, sir," said the little old gentleman, 
relaxing into a grim smile, " where were your 
banners ? You hadn't one in your whole speech ! 
An address to a political assembly in New York, 
and not a tatter of bunting in the whole of it— 
you must excuse me, but it's the weakest thing 
I've ever known. An army might as well go 
into battle as an orator into our popular meet 
ings, without his flags and standards. Where 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



173 



were your stars, too ? There wasn't even the 
twinkle of a comet's tail in the whole harangue : 
they expect it. Stars are the pepper and salt of a 
political discourse — mind that, if you please." 

At this passage the little old gentleman be- 
came thoughtful, and fell upon his oysters and 
beer with horrible avidity ; which process 
caused him to grow more thoughtful than ever. 
"Many a good speech have I heard," he at 
length said, contemplating Puffer Hopkins with 
melancholy regard, " whose deliverer now lies 
under the tombstone. Others lie there, too ! — 
I'd give my life, sir," he exclaimed earnestly, 
pressing iiis hands closely together, " my life 
with its resulting interest, if I dared, for a min- 
ute's gaze at features that are lying in the si- 
lence and darkness of dust. That's hard, sir — 
too hard to bear : — a young wife borne away 
in her bloom, by a cold, cruel hearse — black, 
all over black ! And then what followed — do 
you recollect what followed ? I'm a fool — you 
know nothing of it ; why should you ? Life is 
a green field to you, without as much as a grave 
or a furrow in it all." 

" I am not too sure of that," answered Puf- 
fer Hopkins, " for I have a dim remembrance 
of a death that touched me nearly, long ago ; 
whose death I can not say, but a vision, away 
off in past times, of a darkened house — a solemn 
train issuing forth, with one figure staggering 
into the funeral coach, drunk with excess of 
grief — the heavy roll of wheels, and many tears 
and lamentations in the small household." 

While he delivered this, Hobbleshank looked 
earnestly in his face, as if he discovered in 
what he said, a meaning deeper than the words. 
At this there was a long silence, which Puffer 
Hopkins at length attempted to break, by stating 
to his companion the character in which he had 
appeared that night, for the first time, at Fogfire 
hall. 

"I know," said Hobbleshank, pushing his 
open palm toward Puffer Hopkins, " don't say J 
a word ; I know all about it. You're a young 
professional trader in politics and patriotism ; 
a beginner — just opened to-night with your 
first speech, and a fresh assortment of apos- 
trophes and gesticulations. I know you are 
new in the business, for when you spoke of 
Heaven and eternal justice, you looked at the 
audience. Very green, my boy ; an old spout- 
er, in such a case, always rolls his eyeballs back 
under their lids, and smells of the chandelier, 
which is much better, although the odor isn't 
pleasant." 

" A mere 'prentice at the business, I confess 
myself," answered Purler. 

" I wish you would bear in mind, too," con- 
tinued his whimsical adviser, " when you ad- 
dress a mixed audience, and have occasion to 
speak of the majesty of the people, that the es- 
tablished rule is, not to stare at any individual 
dirty face in the middle of the crowd, but to 
look away off, beyond the crowd entirely ; as if 
you discovered what you're speaking about in 



some remote suburb with which they have noth- 
ing to do. Do you understand me ?" 

" I think I do," replied Puffer ; " but isn't 
there generally some placid gentleman or other, 
who comes to the meeting early, and plants 
himself in front of the platform at a proper dis- 
tance, with the praiseworthy purpose of having 
the speaker lay out all his strength in gazing at 
him, and moving his bowels and understanding ? 
I used to think so — and have tried it more than 
once ; it feels very pleasant, I can assure you." 

" What of that ? It's your business to hum- 
ble these gentry — they're aristocracy in dis- 
guise, and borrow their cartmen's hats to come to 
public meetings in. No, no !" cried Hobbleshank, 
with emphasis, " don't you be caught in that 
trap. Do you pick out the dirtiest waistcoat 
in the audience, with the most cadaverous face 
in the room peering over it — pitch your eye up- 
on the second button from the top, just where 
the proof of a lack of under-garments becomes 
overwhelming — and fire away. Your target's 
a poor scamp — the beggarliest in the house, 
with an understanding like a granite rock (need- 
ing the whole force of an incorporated company 
of metaphysicians to quarry and dress it), and 
a select circle of acquaintance, among wharf- 
ingers, small-boatmen, and bean-eaters, near 
the market. That's your man. Dash your hair 
back from your brow, swing your arms, and 
don't spare flowers, knuckles, tropes, and desk- 
lids." 

By the time Hobbleshank had arrived at this 
division of his subject, he had reached, work- 
ing himself along by degrees, the extremity of 
the stall, and was standing on his toes, with his 
goggle eyes glaring over the partition at a mel- 
ancholy personage — the very counterpart of his 
description — who sat on a stool by the fire, 
with his piece of hat drawn over his eyes, with 
one leg on the ground and the other thrust un- 
der him on the seat. 

"That's one of them," whispered Hobble- 
shank, casting an eye down at Puffer, and 
pointing with his finger over the partition. 
" No it isn't, after all, for there's the top of a 
book sticking out of his pocket. Our kidney 
don't know books." 

Puffer Hopkins leaned out of the stall, and 
stretching himself forward, contemplated the 
object to which Hobbleshank directed him ; but 
instantly drew back, and seizing his companion 
by the skirts, pulled him, almost by main force, 
into a seat. 

"Don't, for Heaven's sake!" he said, as he 
bent forward and placed his mouth at the ear 
of Hobbleshank, " that's my poor neighbor, 
Fob, the tailor." 

These brief words were delivered in such a 
way as if Puffer Hopkins expected their mere 
utterance would silence his companion, and 
cause nn entire revolution in the feeli&gi with 
which he had regarded the sorry creature lie- 
fore the piehouse fire. 

" A poor tailor," he echoed, " well, is that all V 



174 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 






"Yes; that's all !" answered Hopkins. 

'.' Nothing more ?" asked Hobbleshank. 

" Nothing more," replied Puffer Hopkins. 

These questions were asked and answered, 
in tones that brought the conversation between 
them to a dead pause, at which it stayed for a 
good many minutes, when Puffer Hopkins, rous- 
ing a little, asked if that " wasn't enough ?" 

At this moment the poor gentleman at the 
fire waked, heaved a great sigh, and taking an 
imperfect copy of a book from his pocket, and 
lifting his hat from his eyes, fell to perusing it 
with great earnestness ; all of which interfered 
very seriously with any further conversation 
on his condition and prospects in life — so that, 
after contemplating liim steadily for several 
minutes, they thought proper to retreat to the 
previous subject of their discourse. 

" You shouldn't have dropped from the plat- 
form so suddenly," said Hobbleshank. 

" I was through my speech," answered Puf- 
fer Hopkins, " and wished to get out of sight 
at once." 

"Out of sight !" exclaimed his companion, 
as if unconscious of Puffer's presence, "what 
a fool the boy is. Why, sir, if you intend to be 
a politician — a thriving one I mean — you must 
keep yourself in view, like St. Paul's steeple, 
that frowns down on you wherever you go 
through the city. Out of sight, indeed ! You 
should have made a bow to the audience — 
wheeled about — seized the first adjacent hand 
on the stage — shook it with the utmost violence, 
smiling in the owner's face all the while, very 
pleasantly — and then planted yourself on a 
chair fronting the audience — hooked your el- 
bows over the corner of the chair-top — smiling 
steadily on the populace, and leaving off, only 
every now and then, to nurse your ruffle and 
pull down your wristbands." 

" I'll endeavor to practise this next time," 
said Puffer, meekly. 

" Do," said Hobbleshank, " and look to your 
costume, if you please. What do you mean by 
wearing this brown coat, and having your hair 
cut plain ?" 

" I don't know why I had my hair cut this 
way," answered Puffer, " but I wore the coat 
because it was large in the sleeves, and allowed 
a wide spread of the arms when I came to the 
rainbow— thus," and he expanded his arms af- 
ter the manner of an arch, as he had, indeed, 
endeavored to do in the delivery of his speech, 
but was prevented, at the time, from the embar- 
rassment of having to employ his handkerchief 
in clearing the sweat which oozed out in liquid 
drops on his forehead. " You recollect the 
simile ?" 

" Perfectly," answered Hobbleshank. " And 
don't station yourself next time, sir, on the low- 
est point of the platform— but stand forth in the 
centre, making wings of the six vices on either 
side of you, and compelling the anxious pre- 
siding officer, directly behind you, to stretch 
his neck around the skirt of your coat, and to 



look up in your face with painful eagerness to 
catch what you're saying, which always makes 
the audience, who have great confidence in the 
head of the meeting, very attentive. It's a grand 
stroke to make a tableau on any stage — worthy 
the biggest type on the showbills, and here 
you have one of the very finest imaginable." 

" But as to the orator's position," asked 
Puffer ; " do you think a public speaker is 
ever justifiable in standing on his toes ?" 

"In extreme cases, he may be," answered 
Hobbleshank, pondering ; " but it's best to rise 
gradually with your hearers, and, if you can 
have a private understanding with one of the 
waiters, to fix a chair conveniently — a wooden- 
bottomed Windsor, mind, and none of your 
rushers ; for its decidedly funny and destroys 
the effect, to hear a gentlemen declaiming 
about a sinking-fund, or a penal code, or the 
abolition of imprisonment for debt, up to his 
belly in a broken chair-frame. As the passion 
grows upon you, plant your right leg on one of 
the rounds, then on the bottom, and finally, 
when you feel yourself at red-heat, spring into 
the chair, waive your hat, and call upon the au- 
dience to die for their country, their families, 
and their firesides — or any other convenient 
reason." As Hobbleshank advanced in his 
discourse, he had illustrated its various topics 
by actual accompaniments, mounting first on 
his legs, then the bench, and ended by leaping 
upon the table, where he stood brandishing his 
broken hat, and shouting vociferously for more 
oysters. 

No reply to this uproarious summons appear- 
ing, Hobbleshank thrust his head between the 
curtains, discovered that the tailor had vanish- 
ed, and that the tall man was sitting against 
the chimney-piece, with his legs stretched upon 
a stool, and sound asleep. He snatched up his 
hat, and hurrying toward the street, said he 
thought it was time to go. 

As it had worn far into the heart of the 
night, Puffer Hopkins could not gainsay the 
postulate, and followed on. Hobbleshank keep- 
ing a little in advance, they rambled thus 
through many streets ; the little old gentleman 
sometimes hurrying them forward at a gallop, 
and again subsiding into a slow, careful step, 
as if he kept pace with the heavy chimes that 
were sounding midnight from the town-clocks, 
or perchance, with thoughts that beat at his 
heart with a sharper stroke. 

"Be constant, child," said he, as he was 
preparing to leave his companion, "in your 
visits to popular associations and gatherings : 
many a man is platformed and scaffolded by 
these committees and juntoes, into the high 
places of the nation." He then told Hopkins 
where he could leave word for him, in case he 
should at any time require advice or assistance ; 
said that, if he chose, he might be at Barrell's 
oyster-house the next evening, and he would 
wait upon him to one of these assemblages ; 
and before Puffer Hopkins could answer one 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



175 



way or the other, he had disappeared from his 
side, and vanishing into a by-street, was soon 
lost in the darkness. 

It can not be matter of wonder that Puffer 
made his way home with a head considerably 
bewildered and unsettled by the occurrences of 
th£ night. The great popular gathering ; his 
own first speech ; the thundering and tumul- 
tuous applause ; and, what fastened itself with 
peculiar force upon his imagination, the voice 
and figure of the little old man, uttering pensive 
truths or shrewd observations, with the kindly 
interest he had expressed in himself from the 
first moment — all crowded upon him, and made 
him feel that he was in an actual world, where, 
if he would but bestir himself, fortune might 
prove his friend. The result of the whole 
was, that he determined to prosecute his 
career ; and in furtherance of that determin- 
ation, he resolved to meet Hobbleshank again ; 
the last image that his mind distinctly recog- 
nised, ere it yielded to sleep, being that of the 
little paralytic, passing and repassing, at times 
dissolved in tears, and again, filling his cham- 
ber with the echoes of smothered laughter ! 



CHAPTER III. 



THE BOTTOM CLUB. 



Punctual to his appointment with Hobble- 
shank, Puffer Hopkins, at a few minutes of 
seven o'clock the next evening, directed his 
steps toward Barrell's oyster-house, where in 
due time he arrived, and made discovery of one 
of the most singular little oyster-houses that 
could be found throughout the whole of oyster- 
eating Christendom. Mr. Jarve Barrell, it 
would seem, had, in the golden age of his 
career, been the proprietor of a large public 
house, occupying an entire building, and sur- 
rounded by his regiments of waiters and wine- 
bottles, whose services were clamorously and 
steadily demanded, by a mob of customers, 
from six in the evening until one, morning ; in 
fact, the poor man's head had been half turned, 
by the pressure of a prosperous and growing 
business. But, somehow or other, oysters, one 
unlucky season, grew smaller, waiters more 
impudent for their pay, and custom walked out 
of that street into the next, on a visit to a 
new landlord, who served his stews with silver 
spoons and his oysters in scollop-shells, so that 
poor Jarve Barrell was compelled, in spite of 
himself, to clip his wings and confine himself 
to an humbler cage ; in a word, he rented his 
second floor to a boarding-house keeper, took 
in a barber at the rear of the first floor, and 
continued business on his own account in the 
front room of the same. A second decrease in 
the size of shell-fish, the opening of a street 
that carried travel in another direction, and 
Barrell was forced into that last stronghold of 
the oyster-man, the cellar ; and there it was 



that Puffer Hopkins now found him, standing 
on one leg of his own and one that came out of 
a fine piece of oak woods at West Farms, a 
coarse white apron about his waist and a sala- 
mander in his countenance, declaring stoutly to 
a customer, that although he had roughed it 
against the tide all his life, he was determined 
to have his own way in dying. 

Being questioned as to the way to which he 
alluded, he proceeded to explain, that when- 
ever he felt the approaches of death, he should 
hire a White-hallei to pull him over to Staten 
Island, cast anchor just above the richest bed 
in the shore, and giving one good deep plunge, 
said Jarve Barrel], " I'll carry myself to the bot- 
tom, and stretching myself out on a picked 
oyster-bed, make up my mind to die ; so with 
the tide rippling over my head, and a dozen or 
more pretty mermaids standing about me, I'll 
give up the ghost, and hold myself entitled to 
haunt the bay and island ever after, with a 
spruce ruffle of sea- weeds in my bosom." 

Puffer Hopkins was well pleased with the 
joyous spirit of the decayed oyster-man, but had 
scarcely heard him through when he detected 
a quick clatter upon the steps, and turning, he 
discovered his singular companion of the pre- 
vious night hurrying down. In a moment he 
had Puffer by the hand, and hailed his appear- 
ance with a sort of wondering enthusiasm, as 
if it gave him great joy to find him there and 
to take him again in a friendly grasp. Hobble- 
shank interchanged a few words with Mr. 
Jarve Barrell as to the influence of certain re- 
cent enactments relating to oyster-beds upon 
his own trade and custom, to which Mr. Jarve 
Barrell gave very lucid and convincing replies, 
and they set out forthwith for the Bottom Club, 
This they were not long in finding, for Hobble- 
shank guiding Puffer rapidly through sundry 
dark alleys and by-ways, for which he seemed 
to have a peculiar inclination, they reach 3d a 
building in front of which a dusky lamp was 
glimmering, ascended two flights of stairs, and 
knocked at a low dingy door. 

The door was opened from within, and Puffer 
advancing, with Hobbleshank in front, found 
himself in a long narrow room, with a plain 
pine table stretched through the centre, a for- 
lorn-looking eagle, with a bunch of arrowy 
skewers in its talons and a striped flag about 
its head for a turban, two or three carpenters' 
benches along the walls, and the whole lighted 
by four sombre tallow twopennies at the far- 
thest extremity. 

Upon the table was planted a large earthen 
pitcher, with an emblematic toper with his leg 
cocked up, in a state of happy exaltation, dis- 
played on the side thereof in white ware— and 
around the board were established a dozen in- 
dividuals or more, constituting the chief force 
of the immortal Bottom Club. 

The gentlemen of the Bottom Club, as they 
presented themselves at that moment to Puffer 
Hopkins, certainly furnished a remarkable 
spectacle ; the most remarkable feature of 



176 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



which was, that all the large members of the 
club, by some inscrutable fatality, were con- 
strained and restricted in small hats and irk- 
some jackets, while all the small members, by 
some equally potent dispensation, were allowed 
to revel in an unlimited wilderness of box-coat, 
petersham, and tarpaulin. The delicate gen- 
tlemen wore great rough neck-stocks and com- 
manded huge iron snuff-boxes on the table, and 
the robust and muscular members assumed 
dainty black ribands and elegant turn-down 
collars, with more or less ruffle crisping up un- 
der their broad heavy-bearded chins. 

A thin, thoughtful gentleman, at one corner 
of the table, was enveloped in an overgrown 
vest, hideous with great red vines creeping all 
over it, and large enough to serve the purposes 
of a body-coat ; and confronting him, at an op- 
posite corner, sat a stout omnibus-driver, ma- 
king himself as comfortable as he could in a 
waistcoat, so many sizes too small, that it gaped 
apart like a pair of rebellious book covers, and 
drew his arms into a posture that resembled not 
a little that of the wings of a great Muscovy- 
gander prepared for the spit. 

" We welcome you/' said the pale thought- 
ful man, rising and extending his right hand to- 
ward Puffer as he advanced, while with his left 
he secured the sails of his great red vest, " we 
welcome you, Mr. Hopkins, to this association 
of brethren. In us you see exemplified the 
progress of social reform ; we are wearing each 
other's coats and breeches in a simultaneous 
confusion, and, laboring under a passional ex- 
citement, we may yet ameliorate our condition 
so far as to undertake to pay each other's debts. 
We are subjecting ourselves to a great experi- 
ment for the benefit of mankind, the interests 
of the total race. You see what hardships we 
are undergoing" — he did, for at the mere men- 
tion of the thing, the whole club wriggled in 
their ill-assorted garments like so many clowns 
in the very crisis of a contortion — " to test the 
principles of an ameliorated condition of things. 
Yet, sir, we are happy, very happy to see you 
here to-night. This spot on which you stand, 
is consecrated to freedom of opinion — to the fes- 
tival of the soul. This is no musical forest, no 
Hindoo hunter's hut, got up for effect at the 
amphitheatre ; we haven't trees here alive with 
real birds ! the branches laden with living mon- 
keys ! the fountains visited by longlegged fla- 
mingoes ! the greensward covered with gazelles, 
grazing and sporting ! Oh, no ; we are a 
mere caucus of plain citizens, in our everyday 
dresses, sitting in this small room, on rough 
benches, to re-organize society, and give the 
world a new axle ; that's all." 

Hereupon the thoughtful gentleman sat down, 
the club looked at each other and shook their 
heads, as much as to say, " This chairman of 
ours is certainly a born genius;" and Puffer 
and Hobbleshank were earnestly invited to the 
upper end of the board, where they could pos- 
sess the immediate society of the intellectual 
president, with the convenient solace of the 



beer-pitcher. As soon as they were seated, 
and furnished with a draught from the earthen 
jug, to make them feel at home (a man always 
feeling most at home when his wits are abroad), 
the legitimate business of the club proceeded 
with great spirit. 

The first subject that was brought before 
them was, a general consultation as to the part 
the club — the friends of social reform and a re- 
organization of society — should play in the ap- 
proaching election of a Mayor for the city and 
county of New York ; something striking and 
decisive being always expected from the re- 
doubted Bottom Club. One member hinted and 
proposed that there should be a general destruc- 
tion of the enemy's handbills; which was 
amended so as to embrace a thrashing of the 
enemy's bill-stickers, wherever found; which 
was still further enlarged, so as to cover the 
special case of freighting a hostile bill-stick- 
er 's cart with building-stone and breaking a 
bill-sticker's donkey's back. The cutting of 
the flag-ropes, and sawing down of liberty-poles 
next came up, and passed promptly — a stout 
man in a small roundabout asseverating vehe- 
mently that the price of firewood should be 
brought down, if he stayed up till midnight three 
nights in the week, to accomplish the benevo- 
lent object. The club then proceeded to pre- 
amble and resolve that they considered the lib- 
erty of the citizens of this metropolis in immi- 
nent danger, and that they would protect the 
same at the hazard of their lives ; by which the 
Bottom Club meant, that they would hold them- 
selves prepared to breed a riot at five minutes' 
notice, if found necessary to prevent a surplus 
of voters on the opposite side from enjoying the 
invaluable franchise of depositing their ballots. 
Two sturdy members, belonging to the intellec- 
tual and highly-refined fraternity of omnibus- 
drivers, next pledged themselves in the most 
earnest manner, to conduct their respective ve- 
hicles, at such time as might be most apposite, 
through the centre of any well-dressed crowd 
that might be in the neighborhood of the poll, 
and also to indulge in such incidental flourishes 
of the whip on their way, as would inevitably 
persuade the gentry to stand back. As beer and 
brandy flowed through the club — which they 
did, with a marvellous depth and celerity of 
current — the tide of heady resolution deepened ; 
and they at length, in their extreme heat and 
fervor, determined to throw off their coats to a 
man, and enjoy a regular break-down dance 
about the table. 

With wonderful alacrity they carried this ju- 
dicious resolution into effect, by disrobing them- 
selves of coats, shad-bellies, and jackets, and 
casting them in a heap on a sailor's chest es- 
tablished under the eagle's wing. They then, 
hand in hand, Hobbleshank and Puffer Hopkins 
joining in, commenced capering in a circle, 
dashing down, first the right heel and then the 
left, with astonishing energy, and as if they 
were driving in the nails of the floor all over 
again ; meantime roaring out the tag-ends of 



' 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



177 



partisan song, which intimated that, "They 
were the boys so genteel and civil, that cared 
not a straw for Nick nor the devil \" with other 
choice sentiments metrically stated. While 
they were immersed in this elegant recreation, 
a single gentleman — a member of the club — 
who did not choose to partake thereof, sat apart 
indulging in his own profound cogitations. He 
was in many respects a peculiar personage, 
and seemed to enjoy a copy-right way of his 
own ; which copy-right might have borne date 
as early as his birth and entrance into the world, 
for Nature had given him a pale, chalky coun- 
tenance, a sort of blank between youth and 
age ; a pair of knavish gray eyes, always turned 
upward, and a nose of the same class, which 
appeared most honestly to sympathize with 
them. He was of a small, shrunken figure, 
with a slight indication of a hump at the shoul- 
ders, long, thin fingers, and legs of a some- 
what misshapen and imperfect character. 

This singular little gentleman, as we said, 
sat apart, indulging in his own thoughts ; the 
purport of which appeared presently to be, a 
determination to investigate and scrutinize the 
poeketsof the various coats, jackets, and shad- 
bellies, which had been laid aside by the dan- 
cers, for to this task he now assiduously ap- 
plied himself, and while his companions were 
enjoying themselves in their way, he enjoyed 
himself in his own way, by divesting them of 
such of their contents as suited his purposes, 
whatever they might be. In this general scru- 
tiny it would have been an impeachment of his 
talents as an inquisitor to have charged him 
with neglecting the remotest corner or out-of- 
the-way borough of the apparel either of Hob- 
bleshank or Purler Hopkins. 

Having accomplished this undertaking to his 
own satisfaction, he established himself at a 
side of the long table, planted a fur cap of great 
antiquity, after a drunken fashion, over his 
brows, dropped his head upon his folded arms, 
and devoted himself, with great apparent zeal 
and sincerity, to the business of sleeping. 

Meantime the gentlemen of the Bottom Club 
had wearied of their sport, and oppressed by 
beer and hard work, they dropped into their 
seats. 

The pitcher went round, once, twice, and 
thrice, and by this time they had attained an 
elevation of conduct and expression that was 
truly sublime to behold. The heavy-bearded 
man swore, and laughed, and dashed his fist 
upon the table, with the uproar of half-a-dozen 
bakers at kneading time. The two omnibus- 
drivers, for some unknown, and at this remote 
period from the event, unconjccturablc cause, 
entered solemnly into a set-to, in which much 
muscle and science were displayed, and which 
ended in a most fraternal embrace under the 
table. 

A cadaverous, thoughtful man — not the chair- 
man — who was no talker but a wonderful deep 
thinker and metaphysician, grew mysterious 
and communicative, and hinted that he had 
M 



that in the pocket of his swallow-tail which 
would raise a devil of a ferment if the public 
but knew of it. 

A fifth associate of the club, who still re- 
tained an insufficient hat planted jauntily on 
his head, thought it would be a capital idea — 
a very capital idea — a devilish first-rate idea 
in the way of a social re-organization — to get 
together a parcel of gilt steeple-balls, and hatch 
out a brood of young churches by clapping a 
bishop upon them. 

Another gentleman was inclined to think 
that the Bottom Club had better mind its own 
business, by petitioning the common council to 
have jugglers appointed inspectors of election, 
who could pass into the ballot-box two tickets 
for one on their own side, and no tickets for 
ever so many on the other. 

A wide-mouthed member, the author of the 
ditty that had been sung, and clerk and bell- 
ringer to a neighboring market, became horri- 
bly sentimental, shed tears in his beer, and 
kissed his hand to the eagle at the other end of 
the room. As the entertainments were mani- 
festly drawing to an end, Hobbleshank glanced 
warily toward Puffer Hopkins, and made for 
the door. But they were not let off so easily — 
for simultaneous with the rising of Puffer Hop- 
kins was that of the entire Bottom Club ; and a 
general friendly assault was begun upon the 
person of that worthy young gentleman. 

First, the gentlemen of the club insisted on 
shaking hands all round toward the right, and 
then all round toward the left ; one or two 
were resolved to embrace him, and did so ; and 
at last, after the pantomime, there was a unan- 
imous call for a speech from that gentlemany 
which summons was, however, without a dis- 
covery of the substitution on the part of the as- 
tute members of the Bottom Club, responded to 
by Hobbleshank, after his own peculiar fashion, 
with a very happy allusion to the striped flag 
and the refreshments. 

The unshorn man hoped Puffer Hopkins 
would come again, and vowed he was his friend 
to command, from the state of Maine to Cape 
May ; and the metaphysical deep thinker, strug- 
gling manfully with the beer he had imbibed, 
promised next time to communicate something 
of vital consequence to the welfare of this 
Union ; with which promises, protestations, 
and God-speeds, Hobbleshank and Hopkins de- 
parted. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MR. FYLER CLOSE AND HIS CUSTOMERS. 

It can not be denied that Mr. Fyler Close had 
selected his lodgings with commendable thrift 
and discretion. A single small apartment ovtr 
n. bakery, and looking out upon a public pump, 

supplied him :l < the lowesl current rate with 

the three primary necessaries of life; namely, 



78 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



warmth, from the bi-daily inflammation of the 
oven for the benefit of neighboring families — 
biscuits, the Legitimate spawn of the oven — 
and water, the cheap creature of corporate be- 
nevolence. It could scarcely be expected, that 
sundry fat spiders that kept their webs in the 
different corners of his room, would be incor- 
porated in any of the banquets of Mr. Fyler 
Close, although by many people they might 
have been regarded as a respectable addition 
thereto. With the exception of its inhabitants, 
the single small apartment was almost wholly 
void — there being no covering upon the floor, 
no curtains at the window, no paper upon the 
walls, and not the slightest semblance of a fire, 
past, present, or future, on the deserted hearth- 
stone. To be sure, if you had opened a nar- 
row door on one side, you might have detected 
in a cramped closet a pair of coverlids, in which 
Mr. Close was in the habit of sheathing his 
meager limbs every night, as a nominal protec- 
tion against chilblains and rheumatism ; while 
the door of the closet was carefully fastened 
and secured within, from a fear which the oc- 
cupant somehow or other encouraged, that he 
should be roused some unlucky morning with 
a heavy hand on his throat, a big grim face 
bending over him, and his pockets all picked 
clean. 

In the outer room stood a dilapidated candle- 
stand, covered with a tattered baize, with a 
battered inkstand and two stumpy pens lying 
upon the same ; three chairs with decayed bot- 
toms ; and, in the corner of the hearth, a sin- 
gle long gloomy poker, with its head up the 
chimney. 

The advantages of these commodious quar- 
ters were, at the present juncture, enjoyed by 
Mr. Fyler Close himself, who being a short, 
hard-visaged gentleman, in a great blue coat 
some three sizes too large for him, and a pair 
of ambitious trows ers that climbed his legs, dis- 
daining intercourse with a pair of low cheap- 
cut shoes, became the accommodations admira- 
bly. There was another, a long, spare per- 
sonage, with a countenance so marked, and 
scarred, and written all over with ugly lines 
and seams, as to resemble a battered tomb- 
stone ; and having old decayed teeth that dis- 
closed themselves whenever he opened his 
>nouth, the fancy of uncouth dry bones sticking 
out at the corner of a grave was still further 
kept up. There was something extremely sin- 
ister in the features of this individual, who sate 
in the nook between the closet and chimney- 
piece, and constantly glared about him, in a 
restless manner, as if the air swarmed wher- 
ever he looked with unusual sounds, and as if 
he caught sudden sight of faces by no means 
pleasant to look upon. 

" I don't see that I could have managed my 
little moneys much better," said Mr. Fyler 
Close, " unless I had locked them up in an iron 
safe, and buried the key under the walls of the 
house. There's only about four hours — and 
they're at dead midnight— when my debtors 



could slip away from me ; and then they'd have 
to do it devilish cautiously, Leycraft, not to be 
heard. See, sir ! I am in the very centre of all 
my investments, aud have a watch on them 
like an auctioneer at the height of his sales. 
You see that yellow house ? I make the owner 
keep his shutters open, because I have a mort- 
gage on his piano, which I wouldn't lose sight 
of for the world." 

" Quite an eye for music, I should think !" 
interposed his companion. 

" And a pretty good ear too," continued Mr. 
Close, " for if I should fail to hear my little 
blacksmith's hammer in the old forge, off this 
way, I should go distracted. It sooths me 
very much to hear that anvil ringing from 
early light down to broad dusk ; and you can't 
tell what a comfort it is to me when I'm sick !" 

" Is he punctual in his interest ?" asked Mr. 
Leycraft, well knowing that the fine arts must 
be associated in Mr. Fyler Close's mind with 
some such disagreeable contingency. 

"Exemplary, sir; and when he falls sick 
and can't make a racket himself, he always 
sends round word and employs a couple of boys 
to keep it up, just to satisfy my mind. If 
the forge stopped for two days, I should be un- 
der the necessity of coming down on his shop 
with a sharp-clawed writ, which would be very 
painful." 

" Excruciating, I should think," said Mr. 
Leycraft, smiling grimly ; " it would give you 
a sort of moral rheumatism, I've no doubt !" 

" You know it would !" rejoined Fyler Close, 
returning the smile. " Then here's the baker 
— he can't run away without my smelling the 
fresh loaves as they go into the cart ; and the 
haberdasher over the way in front, couldn't 
escape me, unless she undertook to dress up all 
her male acquaintance in ruffles and false bo- 
soms, and let them out through the alley. 
That might do, but I guess she isn't up to it ; 
since she lost her husbaud she's gone a little 
weak in the head, and pays an extra cent on 
the dollar when she is borrowing from Mr. 
Fyler Close." 

" These are small gains and slow ones," said 
Mr. Leycraft ; " you might sit on spiders' eggs 
like these for a century, and not hatch out a 
fortune. Let's have something bold and dash- 
ing—something where you put in no capital 
and double it to boot in less than a week !" 

" Something modelled on the farm-house 
affair, eh ?" said Fyler Close, leering on his 
companion significantly. 

" Will you let that subject alone, if you 
please, Mr. Fyler Close !" cried Mr. Leycraft, 
whose countenance lowered and darkened on his 
companion as he spake. " We have had talks 
enough about that cursed house, and one too 
many. I wish the title-deed was in the right 
owner's hands !" 

" You do — do you ?" urged Mr. Close, pleas- 
antly. " Shall I ask Mrs. Hetty Lettuce, the 
market-women, when she comes here next to 
pay the rent or renew her mortgage, if she 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



179 



ran't find him for us ? Perhaps if we paid her 
well she might relieve us of the property, and 
provide a very gentlemanly owner in our place. 
Shall we advertise — offer rewards — post plac- 
ards ? I've no doubt if the purlieus of the city 
were well dragged, that an heir would turn 
up." 

" Stuff ! Fyler Close, you know well enough 
that an heir couldn't be brought alive off either 
one of the five continents, that could make 
good his claim ; and that makes you chuckle so 
like a fiend. Mrs. Lettuce has lost trace of 
him for more than twenty years — has grown 
fat and lazy — borrows money on bond and 
mortgage, and don't care a straw about the 
subject :" — 

" Where's your grand project all this time ?" 
interposed Fyler Close. " Shall we have some- 
thing new to practise our wits on, or shall we 
rake among our dead schemes for wherewithal 
to warm our brains with ?" 

" Now that you are on that," said Mr. Ley- 
craft, rapidly surveying the nooks and privacies 
of the apartment, and bestowing a broad glare 
on the door and windows, " I say freely and 
without the least reserve, that my head's a 
nine-pin, if I don't lay a plan before you will 
make you thrill down to your pocket-ends with 
rapture : it's a neat scheme — very neat, — but 
at the same time mighty magnificent." 

Saying this, Leycraft drew close up to the 
side of the broker, laid their heads close to- 
gether, and bending over the stand, he moved 
his finger slowly in a sort of hieroglyphic 
over it, and, tapping his forehead complacent- 
ly, was about to detail his notable plan, when a 
knock was heard at the door, which cut short 
any further communication for the present. 

The knock was repeated a little louder ; Fy- 
ler Close motioned to his companion, who van- 
ished expeditiously down a pair of back stairs 
into the yard, looking anxiously back all the 
time as if under pursuit, and so through the ba- 
ker's ; and Close, snatching from his pocket a 
well-worn hymn-book, began reciting a most 
excellent passage of psalmody, in a deep and 
nasal intonation. 

The knock was repeated three or four times 
before an invitation was given to enter ; and 
although the broker glanced over the top of 
his book, as the door opened and discovered his 
visiter, he assumed not to be conscious of the 
presence of any person whatever, but proceeded 
steadily, in fact, with rather increased energy, 
in his capital divertisement. " Please, sir," said 
the visiter, a stout-built lady, curtseying and 
advancing timidly a step or two, " please sir, 
what's to be done about the little mor'gage on 
my grounds, sir ?" 

This question Fyler Close seemed at first al- 
together unable to apprehend ; but when it was 
repeated, accompanied by a slight jingle of sil- 
ver in the visiter's pocket, he started, deposited 
his book open upon the stand — as if he wished 
to resume it at the very earliest convenience — 
looked about him and pensively remarked, 



twitching his whiskers, of which there was a 
dry tuft on either cheek, violently : 

" Poor old man ! — there's no comfort left for 
you now, but psalm-singing and class-meetings 
every other evening in the week. These are 
old chairs, madam !" 

" They certainly are, Mr. Close ; very old ; 
there's no denying facts," answered the huck- 
ster. 

" This is a dreadful dreary room for an old 
man to live in. !'' again groaned the broker. 

" Sartain !" responded the unwary market- 
woman; " I think in that point, to do you jus- 
tice, it's but next better than a family vault, 
saving the death's-heads and the smell." 

" And now you ask me, a poor lonesome 
man, living like Death himself, as you admit, 
and that can afford to keep no better company 
than three poor crazy chairs, to renew your mort- 
gage at seven per cent.! — why, a cannibal, with 
good cannibal feelings, wouldn't ask it !" 

Mr. Close, on delivery of this speech, fell 
silent, and dropped into a profound meditation, 
during which he from time to time looked up, 
and eyed the stout person of the huckster as if 
he thought it would furnish a most delicate 
morsel for a Carribee. But his own method of 
devouring a victim differed essentially from that 
adopted by the benighted heathen, and he now 
proceeded to demonstrate his dexterity in his 
own particular line of manipulation. 

" Well ! you shall have it !" he cried, awa- 
king as from an anxious revery ; " I have con- 
sidered it — your business shall be done, Mrs. 
Lettuce." 

" Thank you, sir — thank you, sir ! I am very 
much obliged," exclaimed the market-woman, 
bowing and curtseying with great show of grat- 
itude, but misapprehending slightly the mean- 
ing of Mr. Fyler Close, and promising the ac- 
cruing interest in hard dollars, punctually on 
quarter-day. 

"But I must have my summer supply of rad- 
ishes !" said Close. 

" Oh, for the trifle of that, Master Close, we'll 
not differ. I can send you down a bunch or 
two by the girls, every now and then." 

" Every now and then will not do, madam ; 
I must have them regularly, for I can't live 
without putting a few for sale, in the season of 
them, at the baker's window below stairs." 

" Well, I don't mind a handful of greens, in 
the way of binding a bargain ; so the cart shall 
stop every morning if you please, and leave you 
a dozen bunches." 

" Very good, very good !" exclaimed the bro- 
ker, rubbing his hands together, " you arc a 
woman of sense ; and now, I must have ray as- 
paragus, that's a dainty herb — I love aspara- 
gus, dearly— and it sells well when it's early. 
Mind, I must have early tops, or none at all/ 
Pick me the tops that grow near the house. 
close up by the foundations, will you .'" 

Early tops, and such as he desired, were nc 
cordin^ly promised, perforce j Mrs. Hetty Let 
tuce diving convulsively into her pockets, t.- 



180 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



make sure of such small change as she had 
about her, as everything appeared to be slip- 
ping awa,] from her ownership with extraordi- 
nary velocity and despatch. _ 

« I'll not ask you," continued the discrimi- 
nating Mr. Close, "to supply me with butter, nor 
with eggs, although something nice might be 
done with them through my neighbor below — 
but eggs are quite apt to addle on hand, and 
butter must be kept in ice, which costs two- 
pence a pound, and melts without leaving as 
much as a thank-ye in your pocket." 

" Your sentiments are very excellent, sir, on 
that subject," said Mrs. Lettuce, brightening 
up. 

" Yes, they are, very excellent ; but you'll 
think them far nicer on the subject of good 
worsted stockings, made with your own dainty 
hands — three pair for winter use, I should have 
three pair at least, and as many more for fall. 
You know we must guard against frosts and 
chilblains a little; made with low tops, with 
red clocks to show they are your fabric — one of 
the sweetest knitters in the market." 

With this he fell back quietly in his chair, 
and reminding Mrs. Lettuce that he should ex- 
pect his first pair of fall socks Wednesday-week, 
he wished her good day ; which wish Mrs. Let- 
tuce was by no means idle in accepting, for her 
departure was, in fact, accomplished with such 
expedition, as to amount almost to a precipi- 
tate flight. At this we can not be greatly as- 
tonished, when we consider the chance of a re- 
quisition being made upon her to furnish the 
entire outfit and wardrobe of the broker, by 
way of lightening his doleful condition and 
eking out the percentage on his mortgage. 

As soon as Mrs. Lettuce had departed, the 
broker ascended a chair, and after careful in- 
spection of an old chest in his closet, and ma- 
king discovery of a single pair of fragmentary 
hose and an old stocking, he said, laughing to 
himself, " This merchandise of the old market- 
woman's must go into the hands of Ishmael, 
that's clear. Nights are growing sharper; a 
little, a very little wood must be laid in ; and 
where fires are kept, socks should be discoun- 
tenanced." He had just stepped down from 
this inquisition, when a sharp rap echoed 
through the hall, and, without waiting for a 
summons to enter, the strange old body, Puffer 
Hopkins' friend, marched abruptly into the 
apartment, with a very peremptory and threat- 
ening aspect. 

" I have come again !" said the old gentle- 
man, sternly. 

" I see you have," replied Mr. Fyler Close, 
smiling on him with all the suavity and mel- 
lowness of an August day. 

" Do you see that I am here ?" continued 
Hobbleshank. 

" Most assuredly — unless you are an appari- 
tion ; and then you are here and not here, at 
the same time," answered the broker. 

" If I were a goblin, sir — come in here with 
a thong of leather to strip you to your skin and 



stripe you all over with blows — wonld I be out 
of place, do you think ?" 

" Perhaps not much ; a little, we'll say a lit- 
tle," answered Mr. Close, still smiling gently 
on his visiter, "just to balance the sentence." 

" And then if I carried your bruised old car- 
case," continued Hobbleshank, " and plunged 
it in a gulf of boiling fire, and held it there 
by the throat for a century, or so — would it be 
pleasant and satisfactory ?" 

" Extremely so," answered the broker ; 
" nothing could be desired more charming, un- 
less it might be a bond on compound interest, 
with the interest payable at twelve o'clock 
daily." 

" That would be finer, you think ?" 

" Much finer — because that would leave one 
the use of his legs to get out of troubles with." 

" Now, sir," said Hobbleshank, who always 
made it a point to subject the broker to a search- 
ing and playful cross-examination — the answers 
to which, as has been seen, on the part of the 
broker, were always extremely candid and con- 
fiding, "now, sir, I want to knowof j<ou, whether 
you think a gentleman who has stood by and seen 
a man's wife die by inches in the veriest need of 
common food — has seen the man go mad — yes, 
mad, sir, withgrief, and flee from his house in 
utter despair and misery — do you think this 
gentleman, who, when he has put the child and 
heir of these poor wretches out of the way — 
God knows how — takes the roof that should 
have sheltered his boy's head — do you think he 
deserves the use of his legs ? or his cursed, gri- 
ping hands ? or his great devilish eyes ?" 

" Not at all — by no means, my dear sir," 
answered Fyler Close, blandly. " It would be 
waste and extravagance to allow such a mon- 
ster anything but his neck ; you know he might 
hang by that." 

" Suppose you hadn't conveniences to hang 
him with — no tackle, no scaffold, no murderer's 
cap," continued Hobbleshank, "and couldn't 
persuade the gentleman to lend his neck to a 
noose — what then ?" 

" What then ? — I confess I should be at a 
stand. The case stands thus, if I apprehend 
you, my dear sir," answered Mr. Close, with 
the same astonishing equanimity, " here's a 
great villain to be punished ; the law can't 
reach him ; he won't consent to be strung up 
without law, and declines — is it so ? — positive- 
ly declines to come into any friendly arrange- 
ment to be burnt or bastinadoed, what's to be 
done ? Upon my honor, my good sir, I must 
allow the knave has the better of you. I am 
sorry for it, extremely sorry ; but the ways of 
Providence are just, very just, and I guess you'll 
have to wait for them !" 

As Mr. Close uttered these words he assumed 
a benign and tranquil expression of counte- 
nance, and looked serenely forward into empty 
space, as if it was a hardship — a very great 
hardship, that such a case should exist, but that 
it was his duty, as an exemplary citizen, to re- 
sign himself to it without a murmur. In this 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



181 



seeming quietude of feeling Hobbleshank scarce- 
ly shared. 

" "What's to be done ?" he shouted, darting 
forward toward the broker — "his ugly flesh is to 
be torn with sharp nails, like pincers ; his head 
is to be broken, where these maggots hatch — 
wretch !" 

But ere he could fasten upon the broker, 
and exemplify his notions of punishment, that 
gentleman, who had been warily watching his 
visiter all through the interview, dropped from 
his chair, glided athwart the candle-stand, and 
throwing himself into the adjoining closet, se- 
cured it from within. 

Having rehearsed this performance many 
times before, in previous interviews with his 
visiter, Mr. Fyler Close achieved it at present 
with marvellous despatch. For a few minutes 
Hobbleshank made furious assaults upon the 
broker's fortress, with his feet and clenched fists 
which he dashed violently against the panels ; 
all of which proceedings were echoed from with- 
in by a hard, iron laugh, that almost set Hob- 
bleshank beside himself. From time to time 
the laughter continued, and the rage of the old 
man increased, until at length, in his extremity 
of passion, he snatched up the single piece of 
furniture — the prime ornament of the apart- 
ment — dashed it in fxagments upon the hearth, 
kicked open the outer door, and rushed almost 
headlong into the street. 

Mr. Fyler Close had no sooner heard his re- 
treating steps, than he quietly unearthed him- 
self, and stepping along the hall of the building, 
hoisted a window in front, and putting forth 
his head, watched with considerable interest 
the form of Hobbleshank as it was whirled 
along by the rage and desperation of its owner, 
without much regard to children, fishmongers — 
with which the street swarmed — wheelbarrows, 
or ladies in full dress. He then tranquilly gath- 
ered the remains of his writing-table, tied them 
in a bundle with a string, and placing them ten- 
derly in the corner, produced from an upper 
shelf of his closet-stronghold a single sea-bis- 
cuit, and proceeded to his evening meal. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE AUCTION ROOM. 



Anxious to become familiar with the peo- 
ple in their assemblies and public gatherings — 
to learn how crowds are excited and assuaged, 
and made to do the bidding of cunning men ; 
now that which would be folly and sheer mad- 
ness with one, may, practised upon many in a 
confused mass, take the hue of profoundest wis- 
dom and justice ; and having at heart, withal, 
the suggestions of his strange old friend of Fog- 
fire hall, Puffer Hopkins now made it a point 
to haunt meetings and congregations of every 
sort, anniversaries, wharf crowds and lectures, 
and to detect how the leviathan populace is 



snared in a fair net of silvery words and pleas- 
ant speeches. 

At the lower extremity of the great thorough- 
fare of Chatham street, just below the theatre, 
lies an oblong, deep shop, into which is drawn, 
between the hours of seven and nine, evening, 
a portion of the metropolitan life, where it is 
kept raging and fuming — pent up in a close 
mass— and struggling with the black-haired de- 
mon of the place. The genius of the oblong 
warehouse is none other than a gloomy-looking 
auctioneer, who hangs over a counter fixed on 
a raised platform, calling on the individuals be- 
fore him — who are chiefly clerks, newsboys, 
journeymen, and innocent gentlemen from the 
country — to sustain him in his disinterested de- 
sire to advocate the elegance of binders, the in- 
structive and entertaining qualities of authors, 
and the gorgeous genius of colorists, engravers, 
and paper-rulers. 

This gentleman is ably sustained and second- 
ed in the performance of these arduous duties, 
by a sable-haired associate, who makes it his 
business to stroll cheerfully up and down the 
enclosed space behind the counter, rubbing his 
hands from time to time, as in token of inter- 
nal satisfaction at the success of their joint ef- 
forts, and dashing down upon the counter such 
wares as a sagacious glance at his audience 
satisfies him are most likely to be competed for. 

On some occasions one or other of the black- 
haired gentlemen behind the counter conde- 
scends to be facetious, and says remarkably fun- 
ny things for the special benefit and solace of 
the citizens underneath. This department prop- 
erly belongs to the auctioneer, but is incident- 
ally filled by the feeder, with such chance mor- 
sels of humor as may suggest themselves to him 
as he rambles to and fro. 

Into this oblong region of sale, as one of the 
resorts where his plans might be furthered, Puf- 
fer one evening made his way. 

" Gentlemen," cried the black-haired auc- 
tioneer, with increased animation as Puffei 
Hopkins entered — discovering, perhaps, in the 
peculiar costume and manner of that excellent 
young gentleman some indications of a melo- 
dramatic tendency — " gentlemen, here's the 
primest article I've offered to-night ; this is 
' Brimstone Castle,' a native melodrama, as 
performed one hundred nights at the Bowery 
theatre, Bowery, New York. The hero of 
this piece, gentlemen, is a regular salamander, 
and could take out a policy in any company in 
this city at a low hazard ; he's fireproof. In the 
first act, he appears sitting on a log, meditating ; 
is suddenly surprised and taken by a band of 
savages of a red-ochre complexion, from whom 
he escapes by ruthlessly cutting off the right 
leg of every mother's son of them— rushes over 
a bridge — rescues a lady with dishevelled hair, 
and a small boy in her hand ; climbs up a cat- 
aract, waves his cap to the rescued lady, loses 
his appetite, and is finally retaken by the sav- 
ages, and burnt at the stake for an hour — when 
he walks out of the flame, advances to the foot- 



182 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



lights, and, with a very cheerful smile on his 
countenance, announces « Brimstone Castle' 
for the next twelve nights, with an extra sav- 
age and fresh fagots every night. How much, 
gentlemen ? Going, going. How much ? — it's 
a masterpiece, gentlemen — a perfect work of 
art. How much ?" 

The melo-drama was handied about for more 
than a quarter of an hour among sundry young 
gentlemen in round-crowned hats, with sleek, 
shining heads of black hair and broad-skirted 
blue coats, but finally fell to the lot of a bidder 
with a stout voice, just one of those voices that 
are irresistible in an auction-room, and a ter- 
ror to gentlemen who desire cheap purchases. 

" I now offer you," cried the auctioneer, " one 
of the most astonishing and wonderful works 
of the present day. It's full of thought, gen- 
tlemen, expressed in the very happiest words 
out of Todd's Johnson and Noah Webster, as 
clear as a moonbeam, gentlemen, and profound 
as the Atlantic. It treats of various subjects, 
such as" — here the auctioneer turned the pages 
of the book in his hand rapidly, after the man- 
ner of a quarterly reviewer, with the hope of 
gleaning a comprehensive knowledge of its con- 
tents ; but, judging by the face of ineffable des- 
pair he assumed after thrusting his nose half-a- 
dozen times between the leaves, with little suc- 
cess — " excuse me," he continued, smiling sar- 
donically on his audience, " it would be presump- 
tuous in me, a plain, unlearned citizen, to un- 
dertake to convey to your minds the substance 
of a volume like this. Gentlemen, I'll read 
you a passage from the introduction, which ex- 
plains itself : — " Ponds have presented turtles 
in two aspects — either as turtles or as not tur- 
tles. In the one, turtle, the living, breathing, 
air-cased creature, the individual in his pneu- 
matic being, sitting on a rock, pond-centred, is 
mighty, supernal, vastly infinite — more than 
frogdom at bottom, blind-eel, or muscle life. 
Not he theirs, or for them, but they nothing, 
save for him. Outward world — to them, mud- 
encompassed — otherwise dead as door-nail. In 
the other, slidden from pond-centred rock down 
to the depths of the unsearchable, frogdom, 
blind-eel, and muscle life — each more than 
turtle. He theirs, being thick-headed, obfustica- 
ted by lack of light, and doltish ; — and for them, 
he little or nothing save a black lump, part of the 
general pond-bottom, pavement, chips, wind, 
gas, snake-grass, and bulrushes.' " 

It need scarcely be added that the lucid work 
on which the auctioneer was engaged, was 
nothing more nor less than a volume of tran- 
scendental lectures. Puffer Hopkins detected 
the same hurley voice bidding for this — and tri- 
umphing in its bid — that he had heard twice 
before. 

At this juncture a member of the great fra- 
ternity of lay bishops — in other words a very 
worthy cartman in his short frock — came in, 
and supposing, from the few words that he 
caught as he entered, that the work in hand 
was illustrative of some new and improved j 



method of " bobbing for eels," was rash enough 
to invest seven shillings in the purchase of a 
second copy. Paying his money very awkward- 
ly at the counter, out of a blind-pocket in hi3 
cart-frock — he carried his purchase to a lamp 
in another quarter of the auction-room, and pro- 
ceeded, very slowly and painfully, to enlighten 
himself on the favorite pursuit of eel-bobbing. 
He bobbed, however, in that pond to very little 
purpose — and becoming confused and horribly 
enraged at the constant recurrence of the phra- 
ses a " oneness," an " obscure and unreachable 
infinite," " divergence toward central orbits," 
and " revolutionary inwardnesses" — intemper- 
ately sold it (for six cents and a fraction) to a 
match-boy, who stood by with a basket ready 
to catch such purchases as might prove una- 
vailable or disrelishing to the buyers. " There's 
an acre of fog-bank there, boy," said the cartman 
from between his teeth, " take it away. My horse 
has a better head for writings, and authorships, 
and what not, than the stupid journeyman fel- 
low that spoked this wheel together. Just away 
with it." 

"If there's a patriot in the room," continued 
the salesman, " a single young or middle-aged 
gentleman that loves his country and the story 
of her achievements, let him come forward and 
lay down his one dollar fifty. I offer you, gen- 
tlemen, the ' Battle of Bloody Puddle,' a narra- 
tive poem, in six books. This masterpiece of ge- 
nius has nine heroes, each one of whom accom- 
plishes more in the way of slaughter, swords- 
manship, and small-talk, from various eleva- 
tions, peaks, cliffs, and hill-tops, than any nine 
heroes ever let loose on the world before. The 
stanza is irregular, to corrrespond with the 
thought, which is very wild and superhuman. 
The chief hero — the A No. 1 — pattern war- 
rior, is discovered by moonlight, sharpening his 
sword on a boulder of granite, in two nimble- 
foot octosyllabic stanzas — he loses his scab- 
bard and temper in four Spenserian — entering 
a cave to conceal himself from the bloody Brit- 
ish foe, who are tracking him about like dogs, 
in twenty-five hexameters — but recovers both in 
an eleven-syllabled song, in which he grows 
very happy about wine, war, and woman, par- 
ticularly Isobel the fair — until, all at once, he 
discovers a cloud on the moon, which reminds 
him to prepare for a few elegiac verses and 
death. He ultimately hangs himself in a hem- 
lock sapling, and leaves his pocket-book, with 
a counterfeit bill and two forged letters in it, 
to his Isobel, bidding her, in a brief, touching, 
epistolary farewell, never to part with these rel- 
ics of his affection — never, never ! which it isn't 
very likely she ever will, particularly the coun- 
terfeits. The rest of the poem corresponds, 
how much, how much ? Cheap — going cheap 
— as politicians' consciences, a penny a dozen. 
It's yours, sir, at twenty-five cents. It's per- 
fectly ruinous to sell this work at that price," 
sighed the auctioneer, wheeling round and sto- 
ically receiving from his assistant a bundle of 
two dozen more of the same. 






PUFFER HOPKINS. 



183 



There was something in the voice of the 
bidder who had borne off the chief purchases 
of the evening, that excited the curiosity of 
Puffer Hopkins ; he thought he had heard it be- 
fore, and, to ascertain the owner, now mounted 
a bench and peered over the heads of the 
audience toward the quarter whence it had 
issued. 

In a remote angle of the auction-room apart 
from the crowd, in a little domain of his own, 
stood a square broad-breasted gentleman, with 
his arms folded and gazing at the auctioneer 
with a fixed and intense look that could not 
have been readily surpassed by a Spanish in- 
quisitor, or a petty justice reproving a constable. 
The fury of his demeanor was heightened by 
the close buttoning of his coat, to the very 
throat, the inflation of his coat skirts with a 
thick bundle of newspapers and a large ban- 
danna handkerchief, the strapping of his pan- 
taloons firmly down upon the boot, and still 
further by his being a gentleman of moderate 
stature, in whom, it is well-known, fierceness 
is natural and quite becoming. It was this 
gentleman that bid for the melo-drama, the 
poem of Bloody Puddle, and the volume of Tran- 
scendental Lectures ; and, now that he had at- 
tained a full view of his person, Puffer felt 
quite sure that he knew him. Pushing through 
the mass of bidders, he reached the little Za- 
hara which this gentleman's frowns and dignity 
had created for himself. 

"Mr. Fishblatt, I think," said Puffer, re- 
spectfully contemplating the figure before him. 

" The same, sir," responded the broad-breast- 
ed gentleman, starting back, a pace or two, 
dropping his brows, and regarding the question- 
er steadily for a minute or more. " You are 
one of our speakers I believe," continued Mr. 
Fishblatt, still maintaining his survey, " one of 
the oratorical youth of Fogfire Hall — am I 
right ?" 

" You are," answered Puffer Hopkins : " I 
had the honor of speaking before you at the 
last general meeting; you were a vice-presi- 
dent." 

" What !" cried Mr. Fishblatt in an earnest 
whisper, "you are not the young gentleman 
that used the simile of the rainbow I On my 
soul you are ; don't blush, my dear sir, and turn 
every color in a minute, for that convicts you 
at once. I'm glad to see you, it's quite a treat. 
Take my hand, Mr. Hopkins." 

Hereupon Mr. Fishblatt took possession of 
Puffer Hopkins' right hand, shook it strenuously, 
and then, turning to the auctioneer on service, 
said : 

" That man's worthy to be a Quarterly Re- 
viewer. He's a Jeffrey, a Babbington Macau- 
lay, sir ; an Edward Everett, with the devil in 
him. He tells books by the smell of the leather. 
And see how daintily he holds an annual up, 
as a fishmonger does a bass by the tail, so as to 
send the circulation to the head, and give the 
eyes a life-like look. Don't he play on the 
loaves and illustrations like a musical genius ? 



See, my good sir, how he displays that volume 
with colored plates, it's like a glimpse into the 
fall woods. This is the shop for sound criti- 
cism; writers that are disdainfully treated in 
the weeklies and monthlies needn't be afraid to 
come here ; if they're hacked and hewed so that 
their best friend couldn't know them, all they 
need do is to huddle themselves into a coarse 
blue-cloth apparel and throw themselves before 
that black-haired gentleman, and they'll have 
a blast sounded in their behalf that will bring 
every two and six pence in the place rattling 
on the counter." 

While the broad-breasted gentleman was en- 
gaged elaborating this artful encomium on his 
friend, the auctioneer had produced a huge 
bundle of controversial tracts and almanacs, 
black with wood-cuts, and dashed them upon 
the counter with great spirit, at which Mr. 
Fishblatt started, again grasped Hopkins by the 
hand, gave him the street and number of his 
residence, and urged him to call speedily. 

" You can't mistake the house ; it's a red 
front with tall chimney-pots — grenadier pots 
we call them — and a slab of brass on the door 
with ' Halsey Fishblatt' in large text. Any of 
the hackmen on the square can direct you, for 
they can all read my plate as they stand, nearly 
two rods off. Come soon !" 

Pouring out his passages of description and 
invitation vehemently, Mr. Fishblatt gave 
Puffer a strenous good-night, advanced and 
threw his card upon the counter, and thrusting 
his right hand into the breast of his coat, 
marched out of the auction-room with great 
vigor and self-possession. 

Now that the chief bidder, who had held the 
room in awe by his peremptory and majestic 
manner of calling the price, had departed, the 
minor customers immediately swelled into con- 
sequence, and a horrible conflict was forthwith 
engendered betwixt the match-boy — whose im- 
agination always kindled at the slightest sug- 
gestion of a goblin — a small retail clerk, who 
had sympathies with coffins and family vaults, 
as he slept every night in an unwholesome and 
grave-like cabin at the rear of the dry-goods 
shop ; and a broken-down gentleman — a specu- 
lator in cemeteries — who was on the look-out 
for information on sepulchral subjects. 

" Here's a rare morsel for you, my lads," said 
the auctioneer, whose style grew more familiar 
on the departure of the majestic Fishblatt, " a 
dainty mouthful, I can tell you. • The Vision 
of the Coffin-maker's 'Prentice,' — a story in 
manuscript — never published. It's a copyright, 
boys, as good as new in first hands. It's said 
the author starved to death because the publish- 
ers wouldn't buy his book; they could import 
goblins and bugbears cheaper than they could 
be grown on the spot." " The bis^est bug- 
bears always come from abroad," said the feed- 
er, pausing a moment from his rambles, facing 
the audience, and laying both hands on the 
counter. "Come bid up, will ye/ Don't go 
to sleep if you please, in that corner. Others 



184 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



say the author choked himself with a chicken 
bone — nobody believes that. Poets and poul- 
try have never been on good terms, that I could 
learn. Will the band be good enough to strike 
up?" 

" Sixpence — there's a dodge !" cried the 
match-boy. 

" I'll go nine," said the retail clerk ; " that's 
a more superlative go, I know." 

" Nine and one," cried the match-boy, redden- 
ing in the face, and glancing spitefully at the 
retail bidder. 

"No penny bids in this shop," interposed 
the auctioneer, authoritatively. " Try again, 
gentlemen — yours, twelve and a half — twelve 
and a half!" 

This last was the bid of the cemetery specu- 
lator. 

" Twelve and a half. Fifteen, fifteen, fif- 
teen — one and nine." The bids ran on ; the auc- 
tioneer chanced to turn the volume toward Puf- 
fer Hopkins, who discovered at the side of one of 
the pages, a pen-and-ink drawing of a stout 
gentleman standing in a coffin, with his right 
arm outstretched as if on the point of begin- 
ning a speech. Not knowing but that this 
might be some new exercise in oratory, and see- 
ing at once the facilities for the pathetic afford- 
ed by a snug-built coffin, Puffer entered the 
field, and, overtopping all competition by a half- 
dollar bid, paid the purchase-money in silver — 
which it employed him some ten minutes to 
hunt into a corner of his pocket and secure — 
and bore it away. 

In less than a quarter of an hour he was at 
his own room in the Fork, and called in his 
poor neighbor, the tailor, and by the light of a 
dim candle (snuffers not being within the ap- 
pointments of his establishment), entered upon 
the perusal of his new-bought story. 

The manuscript was bound in a black linen 
cover, worn threadbare and ragged by much 
handling ; was ornamented with rude drawings 
of crossbones and tombstones, with quaint in- 
scriptions on the margin ; and the leaves were 
spotted in various places, and the ink faded, as 
if many burning tears had fallen on the page. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE VISION OF THE COFFIN-MAKER'S 'PRENTICE. 

" What is more natural than that the thoughts 
of Sam Totton, the coffin-maker's 'prentice, 
should be running on death's-heads and grin- 
ning sculls, and damp, dark vaults, deep down 
in the earth; with now and then a cheerful 
feeling of the pleasantness of country church- 
yards, with tombstones interspersed among 
sweet-scented apple-trees, and rich green palls of 
bright meadow-grass spreading over the grave. 
Now and then, too, he might think of ghosts, 
releasing themselves from the grave and taking 
a night's ramble, and whistling down tall chim- 



neys in cities, or glaring in, with great cold 
eyes, at farmhouse-windows, and frightening 
the quiet circle at the fireside with a dread to- 
ken of death near at hand, or some heavy evil 
about to burst on the unlucky house. By the 
hour would the young 'prentice sit in the un- 
dertaker's shop, meditating on the sorry chan- 
ces of life, the wonderful demand for coffins 
in the summer months, and the strange world 
into which many merry, stout gentlemen, and 
joyous ladies, would ere long be transported, 
screwed close down in the cruel coffins that 
stood in a grim row before him. 

" Some he knew would stretch themselves 
quietly at length, and fall asleep ; others would 
fight and wrestle, like very demons, ere they 
could be brought to bear to be shut down and 
cabined in for ever ; and others again, in whom 
life was furious and not to be readily extin- 
guished, would smite and dash their deadly 
hands against the coffin-lid, and would cry out, 
in voices stifled in the damp, thick clay, to be 
freed. 

" With this turn of mind, the 'prentice was 
sitting one night in the shop, on an underta- 
ker's stool, and watching the various shadows 
that came through the door, as the August sun 
settled in the sky. Now the shadow would flit 
in at one coffin, filling it only breast-high ; 
then, shifting itself, it would take entire pos- 
session of a child's, that stood next ; and so 
flitting past, from one to the other, it brought 
into Sam's mind the thought how these coffins 
would one day be tenanted, and what manner 
of people it might be that should be laid in the 
coffins that stood about him — large and small — 
and how soon they would all be filled and borne 
silently away. 

" The thought had scarcely formed itself in 
Sam's mind, when the shop bell was rung very 
gently ; a glass door that was between him and 
the street was opened, and a figure, more wo- 
begone, wretched, and disconsolate, than he 
had ever before beheld, presented himself, and 
paused for a moment, just long enough for the 
'prentice to take note of his appearance. His 
eyes were wild, and sunken far behind pale, 
ghastly, hollow cheeks, in which there was no 
drop of blood ; his head was without covering 
of any sort, except a shock of uncombed, mat- 
ted hair, and he limped sadly forward on dis- 
proportioned, infirm legs, in scanty apparel, 
and, with an apologetic appeal in his looks to 
the young 'prentice, shambled away into a re- 
mote corner of the shop, and planted himself as 
nearly upright and with as great show of de- 
corum as he could, in a cheap pine coffin that 
stood by itself. 

" Sam felt strongly inclined to enter into con- 
versation with the poor figure, and to learn by 
what chances it had been brought into that 
lean and melancholy beggary. Ere he could do 
this, the door was pushed forcibly open, and a 
portly personage entered, and, stalking across the 
shop with great dignity and majesty of bearing, 
proceeded to an inspection of the coffins ; going 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



185 



close up to them, examining nicely the grain | 
of the wood — yea, even smelling of it, and 
turning away with an air of vast disdain when- 
ever it proved to be cedar or bay wood — the 
quality of the muslin, and the action of the 
hinges. After turning up a majestic nose, dis- 
colored slightly by the use of wine or table- 
beer, at two thirds of the undertaker's assort- 
ment, the portly gentleman at length pitched 
upon a magnificent tabernacle of mahogany, 
with fine rolling hinges, that could'nt jar on 
his delicate ear when he should come to be fast- 
ened in, and an enormous silver plate, with a 
chased border of cheerful flowers, that took 
away the very appearance of death. Having 
concluded to occupy this tenement, the portly 
gentleman proceeded to take possession, and 
with great difficulty crowded himself into the 
coffin ; forgetting, however, to put off his hat, 
which remained fixed on his head in a very 
sturdy and consequential position ; and there 
he stood, bolt-u plight, staring at the young 
'prentice as if it was his determination to chill 
him into an icicle. Sam was, however, not so 
easily over-awed, but, on the contrary, felt 
greatly inclined to burst into a good hearty 
laugh at the comic figure the nice portly gen- 
tleman made in his dainty, brass-hinged, ma- 
hogany coffin. 

" As he turned away his eyes, they encoun- 
tered a spectacle which came nigh changing 
their merry humor to tears ; for a sweet lady, 
all in white, floated gently past him, of a fair, 
meek demeanor, and bearing in either hand two 
little children, a boy and girl, whose faces ever 
turned toward the lady's, with an expression 
of intense and tender regard. Clinging to her 
with a firm grasp, they glided by, and tried at 
first to rest in one coffin together, which proving 
ineffectual, they chose coffins neighboring to 
each other, and, quietly assuming their places, 
they stood calm and patient, as if death had 
fallen kindly upon them; the two children turn- 
ing reverently toward their dear mother, and 
hanging on her pale, sweet look, with passion- 
ate constancy. 

" Directly in the steps of these visiters, there 
entered a personage who, judging from the dot- 
ted apparel in which he presented himself, 
might have been the ghost of some black -spot- 
ted card or other, come to take a hand with 
Sam's master, who was greatly addicted to the 
sport and entertainment of whist-playing. How- [ 
ever this might be, the new comer entered with I 
a couple of somersets, turned about when he had 
reached the centre of the shop, took off his pie- 
bald cap, and made a leg to Sam, and then 
scrambled into a coffin directly opposite that of 
the portly gentleman. 

u For a long time these two personages stood 
regarding each other; the one grinning and 
hitching up his leg, as if he felt the irksome- 
ness of confinement, and the other, with a sol- 
emn look of consequence and self-importance, 
determined the very grave itself should not get 
the better of him. 



"'This is pleasant!' said the portly gentle- 
man, at length, with a slight tone of irony and 
condescension, to his neighbor the clown. 

" ' Very ; but not so airy as the ring !' an- 
swered the merry-andrew. 

" < Nor as snug as a corporation pantry, with 
a cut of cold tongue between two debates,' re- 
turned the portly gentleman. ' But then it has 
its advantages. No taxes — mind that (those 
tax-gatherers used to be the torment of my life) 
— no ground-rents, poor-rates, no beggar's ding- 
ding at the front-door bell.' 

" * But consider,' responded the clown, * though 
we lodge in a cellar, as it were, a good under- 
ground, six steps down, where are the oysters 
and brandy ? Did that occur to you ?' 

" ' I confess it did not,' said the portly gen- 
tleman, slightly staggered ; ' but I was thinking 
now what a choice storage this would be for 
half a gross of tiptop champagne, with the del- 
icate sweat standing on the outside of the bot- 
tles.' 

" < There's no room for a somerset here, ei- 
ther,' said the clown. 

" * Nor to deliver a speech in,' answered the 
portly gentleman. ' See, I couldn't stretch out 
my right arm half its lengih, to make even my 
first gesture : rather a cramped, close place, 
after all.' 

" ' Vanities ! vanities !' cried the Poor Fig- 
ure, from his distant coffin, unable to suppress 
his feelings any longer. ' Cramped and close 
is it ! It's a paradise compared to the dark, 
damp dungeons on the earth, where the living 
body is pent up in dreary walls, and the cheer- 
ful light of day comes in by stealth through grim 
bars ; when the world moves past the poor pris- 
oner's window without a look of recognition ; 
when no man's hand takes his in a congenial 
grasp : is that life, d'ye say ? He is dead, I 
tell you — dead !' cried the Poor Figure, in a 
voice of piercing agony, * as if the marble slab 
was laid upon his breast, and the grave-diggers 
piled mountains upon his corse.' 

" ' Many's the jolly time,' resumed the portly 
gentleman, without much heed to the Poor Fig- 
ure's declamation, < we've had at city suppers. 
How tenderly the turkey's breast— bought by 
the commonalty, purchased by the sweat of the 
hard-worked million, yielded to the shining knife; 
how sweetly the popular Port wine and the pub- 
lic porter glided down the throat. Choice times 
were those, my good sir, when the city paid the 
hackman's fare for dainty rides to the suburbs, 
and when we made the poor devil paupers stand 
about us licking their thin chaps, while we 
rolled the rich morsels under our tongues. But 
now,' he added in a rather melancholy tone, 
1 1 am little better than one of the heathen, 1 
smell nothing but the musty earth; my gay- 
apparel is falling piecemeal into doleful tatters, 
and I can get nothing to chew upon but an oc- 
casional mOuthful of black mould, that Sadly 
impedes digestion, if one had any digestion in 
such a place as this, worth speaking of.' 

"'Think but of one thing, sir,' said the 



186 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



clown, with an uneasy movement in his coffin, 
* and you can not fail to be content. Where 
are the duns in this new empire of ours ? We 
are as inaccessible to the vile creatures as the 
crown of an iceberg. Why, sir, there was a 
poor wretch of a collector that haunted me for 
a vile debt of twenty-two and sixpence, until I 
was sorely tempted to take his very life, and 
put myself upon contrivances how I could take 
it with most pain and torture to his body and 
soul. I thought of all sorts of man-traps, and 
pitfalls in blind alleys, and leaden-headed 
bludgeons ; and at length — heaven save the 
mark ! — I pitched upon the scheme of carrying 
him off in a balloon, and, about two miles up, 
letting him slip, with a cord about his neck, 
and hang dangling by the neck, until dead, ten 
thousand feet high. He was got safely into the 
balloon by a dexterous accomplice, was carried 
up, and, now that my mind was at ease as to 
the result, I went home to take a quiet cup of 
tea, and to settle up my books, meaning to run 
my pen through the twenty-two and six as a 
settled account, when — the Lord save us — who 
should knock gently at my door, and march in 
with his old impudent smile, than my old ene- 
my the collector, with his customary phrases — 
hoping he didn't intrude, and, if it wasn't too 
much trouble, he would like to have the small 
amount of his bill, which, as I knew, had been 
standing some time. The rope had broken, sir, 
just as they passed over my house ; the vile 
little rascal had pitched upon the roof, and, 
making the best of circumstances, had walked 
down my scuttle, and availing himself of the 
opportunity, had looked in with his cursed lit- 
tle bill. We're free from the scamp now : I'm 
not sure — isn't that he in the pine coffin ?' 

" Sure enough, there stood the Poor Figure, 
leaning toward them, and listening in an atti- 
tude of intense regard, to every word that had 
fallen from the lips of the clown. 

" * I am the man !' he cried with great em- 
phasis, when the clown had ended ; ' none other 
but I. On the little paltry debt of twenty-two 
and sixpence hung my old father's life, who lay 
rotting in the cold jail, waiting for deliverance, 
which I had promised him many times, with as 
false a tongue as man could. I said I would 
come to-morrow at such an hour, and the next 
to-morrow at such an hour — naming, in my 
desire to bring him definite hope, the very 
minute and second — and I did not come. Was 
not that a lie ? And did you not stand behind 
me, another liar ? How many lying, false 
tongues, wagged with yours and mine, in that 
little business of the twenty-two shillings and 
sixpence, God only knows ! I forgive you the 
debt : the old man's bones are at the bottom of 
the prison well, where he perished ; they should 
plead for truth from its gloomy womb, and have 
a voice to shake prison walls and fetters from 
manly limbs : God grant they may.' 

" The Poor Figure had scarcely ended, when 
the door was slowly opened, and disclosed a 
meek little man, clad in a neat suit of plain 



black, with two snow-white bands falling under 
his chin. His gait and aspect denoted many 
solemn thoughts, and with a slow pace, and a 
seeming consciousness of the gloomy realm in 
which he was treading, he advanced to an ob- 
scure corner of the place, and, folding his arms 
calmly upon his breast, stood silently in his 
coffin, his head only inclined a little to one 
side, as if he expected momently to catch the 
sound of the last great trump, and to welcome 
the summons. 

" Sam heard a noise in the hall, as of some 
person shuffling about in heavy boots in search 
of the door, and, after the lapse of a few min- 
utes, a large man, in a white coat with a dirty 
cape, a ponderous leather hat, and a club in his 
hand, swaggered boldly in, and after looking 
about him for a while, as if on the watch for a 
ghost or apparition, walked quietly off, and ta- 
king his station in a comfortable cedar coffin in 
the middle of the apartment — obviously mista- 
king it for a watch-box — fell gently asleep. 
From all that he saw, Sam imagined that this 
was a city watchman ; and the presumption is, 
that he was not far wrong. 

"After a salubrious slumber of some ten 
minutes or more, this gentleman waked up, and 
thrusting his head out of his coffin, stretched 
his neck, and gazed up and down the apart- 
ment, and then toward the ceiling. 

" < How the devil's this ?' he at length ex- 
claimed, ' the lamps are out early to-night, and 
the alderman must have put the moon in his 
pocket, I guess : that's the way they serve us 
poor Charleys ; we wouldn't catch a rogue more 
than once an age, if we didn't take them into 
porter-houses and get 'em drunk, and study their 
physiognomies, and so set them a stealing half 
fuddled !' 

" « What's that you say, my man ?' cried the 
voice of the portly gentleman. 'What fault 
have you to find with the corporation, I'd like 
to know ? Do you pretend to impeach their 
astronomy, sir, and to say, sir, that the moon 
doesn't rise when she is set down for in the 
almanac ? I'd have you know, sir, the moon's 
bespoke three months ahead ; and that the oil- 
dealers know when they put a short allowance 
in the lamps ! I'll have you broke, if you 
haven't a care how you speak of an alderman : 
a word to the wise in your ear, sir.' 

" The watchman was making up his mouth 
for a reply, and it is impossible to say what 
choice specimens of rhetoric might not have been 
furnished between them, but, at this moment, 
the shop-bell was rung with great fuiy. Sam 
started up with wonderful alacrity — distin- 
guishing the ring at once from all other possible 
rings — and receiving, as he advanced to the 
front of the warehouse, a thumping blow on the 
side of the head, was asked what he meant by 
leaving the shop open at that time of the night, 
and coffins out at the door to be rotted by the 
night-dew and chalked up by young vagabonds 
in the street ? 

" This was of course Sam's master. Sam's 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



187 



visiters mistook it, however, for a summons of 
a very different kind; the watchman, supposing 
it to be an alarm of fire, rattled his club against 
the coffin-side and sprang for the door; the 
portly getleman thought it a melodious supper- 
bell, and, disengaging himself, exhibited equal 
activity; the Poor Figure followed, hobbling 
along like a waiter in a hurry ; the clown, for 
the call-boy's notice, and somerseted through 
the door ; the sweet lady in white, for the last 
peal of the Sunday summons, and glided away 
with her children at her side ; and the little 
parson, smoothing down his bands and calming 
his thoughts to the purpose of the hour, ta- 
king it for the Wednesday evening lecture-call; 
and so the company dispersed. 

" Sam, busying himself in obeying the under- 
taker's orders, soon closed the warehouse ; and 
as he moved past the empty coffins, to his bed 
at the end of the shop, and thought how they 
had been lately filled, it occurred to him how 
inopportunely men might be laid in their graves ; 
debtors lying nearest neighbors to catchpoles 
and deputies, whose approach was the curse of 
their life ; the clown and the alderman, par- 
sons and profligates, in a tender vicinage ; tap- 
sters and the favorers of the pure stream, per- 
chance murderers and their victims, and break- 
ers of troth and violators of faith pledged to 
woman, in a proximity so close, that the skeleton 
arm outstretched might reach into the grave 
where the broken heart lay, and take its cold 
and ineffectual hand back into that which had 
done it such deadly wrong. On judgment day, 
when the tiump sounds among burials like 
these, if aught of fiery or human passion remain, 
what awful scenes will bear witness to the fan- 
cy of the young 'prentice-boy — when forms 
shall start up and have life again but to glare 
on other wakened forms — to loathe, curse, 
scorn, and abhor that on which they gaze ! 
Grave-yards would then know a strife and pas- 
sionate conflict, that battle-fields could not 
match, with all their sanguinary stains, and 
cries of horror, vengeance, or despair." 



CHAPTER VII. 

PUFFER HOPKINS RECEIVES AN APPOINTMENT. 

Toward the close of an afternoon, a few days 
after the visit of Puffer Hopkins to the auction- 
room, a deformed little personage was strolling 
through the street, with his arms nearly to his 
elbows in his breeches'-pockets, his head thrown 
back a trifle, and his eyes turned up as if he 
were in the very depths and profundities of a 
cogitation of some consequence ; in short, it 
was our gentleman of the Bottom Club, who 
practised upon certain pockets, as has been seen, 
on a a former occasion. 

" Three pair of fowls at three shillings, makes 
nine," said the little gentleman, " the old red 
rooster at five shillings — though his liver's dis- 



fourteen. That's for after-breakfast work. 
Then before, there's twenty pound of hoop, 
at twopence a pound, and a sheet of copper, 
seven pound, at fivepence — thirty-five and for- 
ty, as good as seventy-five ; and all the after- 
noon for a holyday to find out where this Puffer 
Hopkins lives, and to hatch out an acquaint- 
ance with him. There's something brewing in 
the wind 'twixt him and that shabby old luna- 
tic, Hobbleshank ; something going on that 
ought to be put a stop to; and as the wice 
chance-seller of law won't interfere to sepa- 
rate such good friends, we'll see what Mr. 
Small, Ish Small, of Pell street, or thereabouts, 
can do." He walked a few paces farther, and 
again broke out, " Let me catch that old fellow 
trying any of his tricks on Uncle Close, as he 
did ten years ago, when he pitched his family- 
watch at my crown, and we'll see if there a'n't 
a spice of sport about it, Strike up, old 'un, 
I'm here !" 

Saying this, he trotted down the street, 
turned into a by-way, crossed that at a good pace, 
and speedily reached a corner building, from 
which a great striped flag was waving and a tu- 
mult of voices issuing. Into this he made his 
way, selecting a suitable position, and at the 
proper moment (a great deal of the same sort 
of business going on at the time), he called out 
the name of Puffer Hopkins, which was duly 
entered by one of the clerks of the meeting up- 
on a roll, and the agile little performer, there- 
upon, departed. 

This time he selected a different course, stri- 
king straight toward the heart of the city, for 
several blocks, and emerging upon an open 
square. He now looked about him for several 
minutes, indulging in a severe scrutiny of the 
neighboring buildings, and at length fixed his 
eye upon a dingy, yellow house, which stood 
facing the square, and forming the fork or ex- 
treme point of two streets. 

" I think I should know the house by the de- 
scription," he said, measuring it again with his 
eye from top to bottom ; " it isn't quite a pal- 
ace, that's clear; I don't believe the Grand 
Signior lives here, nor his highness the chief of 
the Seneca tribes. There's considerable pov- 
erty written in dirty paint all about the front ; 
and, judging by the windows, I guess it's had a 
hard fight with the brick-front across the way, 
and got an eye or two put out." At this mo- 
ment the light of a lamp fell from a window of 
the upper story, and Mr. Small, turning his face, 
up toward it, exclaimed, " His light, by all that 
shines ! It an't a astral, anyhow ! He's study- 
ing a speech, or mixing a dose of resolutions, 
now, and I'll step in and surprise him. I've no 
doubt the stairs will hold out till I gel up and 
down, although they look as if they was on their 
last legs." 

Climbing a narrow and ill-arranged way, he 
attained the topmost landing, whore he stood 
for some time, in doubt which door, of the ma- 
ny that presented themselves, to select, when, 
turning suddenly, M he heard some one ascend- 



188 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



ing the stairs, he stumbled, and falling against 
a door, dashed it open, and landed in the very 
centre of a room. It would be, perhaps, a suf- 
ficient description of this apartment, to say that 
it was hardly large enough to fight a boxing- 
match in, with the attendant spectators ; that, 
besides the person of Puffer Hopkins, it held 
the heads of Demosthenes and John Randolph, 
a solitary chair, a small auction-bought desk, 
and a long fragment of looking-glass established 
in one corner. 

" Your humble servant, sir ; your most obe- 
dient ! I thought I'd just stop as I was passing, 
and tell you you are a regularly-elected mem- 
ber of the Vig'lance Committee of this ward !" 
said the visiter, grasping his cap in both hands, 
assuming a countenance of great simplicity and 
innocence, and travestying a bow, a good deal 
in the style of a theatrical waiter, retiring. 

" By whose goodness is this ?" asked Hop- 
kins, eagerly. 

" Mine, for lack of a better, sir. I thought 
it would be a little sort of a treat, now that 
strawberries are out of season !" answered the 
little gentleman, licking his lips. 

" Yours, sir ?" exclaimed Puffer, seizing him 
by the hand ; " I owe you a debt of gratitude 
for life for this. Don't I know you, sir ? you 
are a member of the club, I believe : the me- 
morable and immortal club — the Bottom, I 
mean ?" 

Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he 
ran on in a very fluent and enthusiastic style, 
pronouncing his introduction to the Bottom 
Club one of the most fortunate incidents of his 
life ; his acquaintance with the gentleman be- 
fore him as one of the greatest pleasures he had 
ever known ; said that he was attached to his 
party and his principles — no man more ; and 
that he was resolved to perform his duty as a 
member of the Vigilance Committee with the 
utmost zeal, promptitude, and despatch. 

The stranger, although a small man, was not 
a little astonished at this tide of eloquence (for 
Puffer Hopkins was in the middle of a declama- 
tion to his looking-glass on some supposed fes- 
tive occasion when the visiter had broken in, 
and which declamation, in the flutter of the in- 
terruption, he applied to his unexpected advent) 
— we say he was not a little surprised ; but it 
was with main effort he subdued his mirth, 
when, at the end of all these elegant promises 
and professions, Puffer Hopkins asked him 
" what he had to do ?" 

Now there are many things that a member 
of a vigilance committee, giving a liberal con- 
struction to the designation, might be supposed 
to be engaged in with great propriety. Pos- 
sessing the sharp eye that of right belongs to a 
functionary so entitled, he should pierce into 
the heart of hidden abuses, following them with 
close, wary steps, into obscure dens and haunts 
— getting at awful secrets of crime, veiled from 
all other eyes — detecting, through the world, in 
their thousand disguises and hypocritical man- 
tles, fraud, cruelty, domestic wrong, and the 
whole brood of cozenage and knavery. 



It was pretty clear that it was to none of these 
varieties of service that Puffer Hopkins was ex- 
pected to devote his very promising talents ; 
and of this Puffer himself had some faint con- 
ception, for when he puzzled his brain in search 
of the duties of his new character, it did not oc- 
cur to him that it had ever been the business 
of any politician, past or present, or would be 
in all future time, to subserve in any possible 
way the plain, simple, every-day interests of 
humanity. 

At this question, Mr. Small laughed ; not, 
however, as if any circumstance of the present 
interview, or relating thereto, had struck him 
as at all humorous, but as if his thoughts were 
fixed upon some remote incident, away off a 
good many miles, and arising from such inno- 
cent sources as might be supposed to move the 
mirth of so simple-minded a gentleman. Laugh 
he did, however, with such violence as to com- 
pel him to place a hand upon one of his ribs, 
while he planted his elbow against the wall to 
support the other. 

From all which, it might be presumed that 
the little gentleman thought it quite a diverting 
question, to be asked what the members of a 
vigilance committee had to do. Laughing, and 
still holding his sides, the dwarf gentleman 
again burlesqued a bow, and hurried from the 
apartment, leaving Puffer Hopkins in a state 
of no little wonder and bewilderment. 

Determined, nevertheless, to acquire a more 
definite knowledge of the functions and duties 
of this majestic office, Puffer snatched up his 
hat, shifted himself into a bright blue coat with 
intense brass buttons, and went forth. In the 
excitement and anxiety of mind resulting from 
the sudden knowledge of his appointment, he 
had enjoyed a brisk walk of two squares or 
more before it occurred to him that it would 
greatly further his inquiries if he would take a 
minute or two to consider where they should be 
made. 

After many misgivings and fluctuations of 
opinion, he at length fixed on Mr. Fishblatt, 
and, for a variety of reasons, selected that gen- 
tleman as an adviser in his present emergency ; 
to whose residence he turned his steps with all 
becoming expedition. Glancing about for an 
overgrown door-plate and a red front surmount- 
ed with gigantic chimney-pots, Puffer was not 
long in discovering the domicil of which he was 
in search ; which domicil was, however, adorn- 
ed, beyond the description of Mr. Fishblatt, by 
an oblong sign stretched across the entire front, 
and cutting the house unpleasantly into halves, 
indicating that the safe, cheap, and accommo- 
dating corporation of the Phoenix Fire Insurance 
Company harbored within. 

Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, therefore, inhabited a 
second floor ; and after a due performance on a 
door-bell, and ringing all the customary chan- 
ges, Puffer was led by a frouzy-haired servant 
girl through the hall, up one flight of stairs, and 
into a small supplemental building, in a small 
room whereof — comprehending the entire 
breadth and length of the same — he came upon 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



189 



Mr. Fishblatt, seated grandly in a very high- 
backed chair, holding in his outstretched arms 
an enormous newspaper, on which his eyes 
were fixed as keenly and comprehensively as if 
he expected by the perusal of the sheet before 
him at that very time, and the mastery of its 
contents, to become one of the finest scholars 
and profoundest critics in the country. He was 
assisted in the achievement of this mighty pur- 
pose, if he entertained it, by a gorgeous spirit- 
lamp which was fed by a ball, and blazed away 
on a table at his side like a meteor. 

On the entrance of Puffer Hopkins, the 
reader sprang to his feet, cast down the paper, 
and rushing anxiously toward his visiter, fixed 
upon his right hand with the tenacity of a grif- 
fin. " My dear fellow," cried Mr. Fishblatt, 
earnestly, " Pm glad to see you. Down with 
your hat. Make yourself at home. This looks 
like home, doesn't it ? Everybody thinks so 
that comes here. I don't suppose you could 
find a snugger room of the kind in the whole 
planetary system. You see how roomy and quiet 
it is : here are all my books around me — pam- 
phlets, sermons, speeches, documents from Con- 
gress, documents from Legislatures, catalogues, 
tracts, and lexicons. And look here, sir !" turn- 
ing about in his chair, and running his finger 
rapidly along a line of great, grim volumes that 
stood against the wall — " a bound newspaper 
from every state in the Union, written up in tip- 
top style ; classical, sir, every word of them — 
classical and immortal ! What do you say now, 
sir ! Isn't it very nice ?" 

" I certainly think it is," answered Puffer, 
contemplating the questioner with considerable 
astonishment. 

" There's something on your mind," contin- 
ued Mr. Fishblatt, scarcely waiting an answer ; 
" I know it ; I see it plainly — something that 
harasses and worries you. You don't sleep ; 
you can't rest : it troubles you so. Come, out 
with it, my boy ; let's have it at once. What 
is it that makes you look so anxious ?" 

" To tell the truth, I'm a member of the Vigi- 
lance Committee, and don't know what my du- 
ties are," answered Puffer ; " and I have taken 
the liberty to come and ask you what I shall do 
in my new capacity." 

" If I was a member of a vigilance commit- 
tee," said Mr. Fishblatt, regarding Puffer Hop- 
kins with great gravity and steadiness, " I 
should consider it my duty to have immense 
telescopes constructed ; and I would plant them, 
sir, where I could look into the very interior of 
every domicil in the ward, and know what was 
in every man's pot for dinner six days in the 
week. This may not be your view of duty, 
sir ; but I should feel bound to have great 
legers kept, with leaves that opened like doors, 
and there write down every man's name in 
large letters ; and I'd have a full length of him 
drawn on the margin, and colored to the life. 
I'd give his dress, sir, down to the vest buttons, 
and if there was a mote in his eye, I'd have it 
there to be cross-examined, when he came up 
to vote. Now don't say you. can't do this — you 



haven't the physical strength to keep such a set 
of books." 

"Would you inquire so very particularly," 
asked Puffer, timidly, for he felt abashed by the 
grand conceptions of the imaginative Fishblatt, 
" into the private habits of voters ?" 

" I would, sir," answered Mr. Fishblatt, per- 
emptorily; "I'd know whether they slept in 
trundle-bedsteads or high-posts ; whether they 
preferred cold-slaugh cut lengthwise or crosswise 
of the cabbage ; whether their shoes were hob- 
nailed or pegged. Can you tell why I'd do this ?" 

Puffer Hopkins frankly and heroically con- 
fessed that he could not very readily, without 
the aid of Mr. Fishblatt. 

" I knew you couldn't," said that distinguish- 
ed rhetorician. "Don't you see that the pub- 
lic conduct of the man is foreshadowed in his 
personal habits ? A man that wears red flannel 
shirts is always for war : a man that employs 
night-caps is opposed to riots. The voters that 
browbeat their servants at home, sir, always 
cry out for strengthening the executive. Go 
into that man's house over the way, sir, the 
house with the meek salmon-colored door ; that 
door is a hypocrite and deceiver, sir ! Climb 
to the fourth shelf of his pantry and you'll find 
two red-handled rawhides ; that man approves 
of despatching the Florida Indians by drugging 
their brandy with ratsbane. That man's on 
his knees every Sunday in the orthodox chapel, 
wears out a pair of knee-cushions every year, 
and has breeches made without pockets to es- 
cape the importunities of beggars in the streets 
and highways. Put him down in your journal, 
sir, as a knave, a villain, a low base fellow — 
will you ?" 

" The laws hardly reach such men," suggest- 
ed Puffer. 

" I'd make them reach," said Mr. Fishblatt, 
confidently, " I'd stretch 'em till they did reach. 
I'd hang such men higher than Haman ; I'd in- 
vent every kind of rack and thumb-screw, and 
worry their lives out by inches ; I'd fill their 
houses with bugs and alligators : they should 
have pirates to wait on them at table; and 
they should sleep with bandits swarming about 
their beds, great black-whiskered bandits, with 
pistols charged to the muzzle and always on 
the full-cock. Would that serve them right ?" 

" I think it would, strictly speaking," an- 
swered Puffer; "but, as a member of a vigilance 
committee, should I undertake to spy out such 
abuses ?" 

" Oh, no; your business is — have I told you 
what your business is ? — to go along the wharves 
and up into alleys, and down into cellars, and 
inquire for voters, disseminating the right doc- 
trine by the way, and making everybody of 
your opinion, by having no opinion at all. Are 
you on the dock committee, or one of the alley 
committees ?" 

"Neither," answered the young politician, 
"I think mine is known as the rear-building 
lection." 

"Arc you advised whether there are any old 
women there} to give iron spectacles to? or 



190 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



small children, to nurse with gingerbread ? or 
any recent deaths in any of the families, that 
you may sympathize in the bereavement, by 
wearing a strip of crape on your hat ?" 

"I have no instructions," answered Puffer 
Hopkins. 

"Then you had better go prepared for all 
emergencies — you had better carry a piece of 
calico under your arm, to cut into gowns ; half 
a dozen papers of confectionary in your pock- 
ets ; a gross of clay pipes, for the superannuated 
voters or their aged relatives ; a bale of cordu- 
roys ; and, perhaps, I only suggest this, a bas- 
ket of sheep's pluck." 

« What is this last for ?" asked Puffer, ga- 
ping with astonishment at the personal services 
required of him, as a member of the high and 
mighty ward vigilance committee. 

"To wheedle their dogs with," answered 
Mr. Fishblatt, " if they happen to keep any in 
the front yard." 

Surprised and perplexed by the requisitions 
of the. vigilance branch of the service — as ex- 
pounded by Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, the extraor- 
dinary fervor of whose fancy Puffer Hopkins 
had not yet quite learned to appreciate— he di- 
rected his steps toward his lodgings in the 
Fork, striving his best to project the means by 
which he should procure the articles enumera- 
ted, and the kind of conveyance by which they 
were to be transported to voters' houses. 

As to the latter, his mind wavered between 
a porter's go-cart and a butcher boy with broad 
shoulders, and, as to the first, he had not reach- 
ed a conclusion when he reached home ; where 
he was opportunely relieved from further per- 
plexity for the present, by having a dirty billet 
placed in his hands, inviting him to a meeting 
of the very vigilance committee itself at the 
headquarters, at half-past seven that evening. 

Disposing of a thrifty meal, consisting of two 
cheap slices of bread, a saucer of onions in 
vinegar (an excellent thing for the voice), and 
a bowl of black tea, he whirled his hat half a 
dozen times about his left hand, applying to its 
nap, meantime, the sleeve of his right arm, 
buttoned his coat as smartly as he could, and 
leaving word that he had gone to a public meet- 
ing, the young politician put forth. 

A few minutes' rapid walking, for he was 
behind his time, brought him to the room in 
which the committee assembled, and halting 
for a moment for a general survey, he entered, 
and assumed his seat on a bench against the 
wall with his fellow-laborers, who were present 
in great force, looking as vigilant and shrewd- 
minded as their station required. A member 
was on his legs expounding, in very animated 
and felicitous style, the glory to be reaped by 
any adventurous canvasser, who, in the service 
of his country and impelled by a desire to trans- 
mit a name to his children, should plunge down 
a certain cellar — which he described — and se- 
cure the names of several desperate villains 
who there harbored with the intent of coming 
forth as voters at the spring election, and per- 



juring themselves in the very face and eye of 
Heaven. 

This gentleman was followed by a second of 
equal power and comprehensiveness of vision, 
who declared, on his personal honor and well- 
known character for integrity, that they might 
look-out for a riot, and one of a very serious 
cast. He had said serious cast because the 
size of the clubs in preparation was unusual. 
He had a friend (thank Heaven !) whose confi- 
dence he believed he possessed. He was a wood- 
turner, he had been secretly employed to furnish 
a gioss of heavy bludgeons in the disguise ol 
balustrades. For this fact they might take his 
word. He didn't mention it to alarm any gentle- 
man present. He didn't wish any gentleman to 
stay at home or to put himself at nurse on elec- 
tion day, to avoid anything unpleasant that 
might be abroad in the shape of clubs or blud- 
geons. For his part, he had nothing to fear, 
he only wished to put gentlemen of the com- 
mittee on their guard, and to drive them to take 
into serious consideration the expediency of re- 
viving the use of the ancient helmet. 

These words had scarcely escaped him, when 
a pale young gentleman sprang up from a table 
at the corner of the room, and offered a resolu- 
tion imbodying the suggestions of his friend ; 
which was promptly seconded by a respectable 
and worthy tinker across the room, who had a 
presentiment that the helmets in question must 
be made of sheet-iron quilted with tin — which 
would all fall in his line of trade. The resolu- 
tion was, notwithstanding this able advocacy, 
doomed not to become an heroic determination 
of the committee corporate, being extinguished 
and quenched for ever by a flood of invective 
and ridicule issuing from a gentleman who con- 
descended to perform journey-work in a hatter's 
establishment, and who properly enough regard- 
ed such an attempt as an invasion of the rights 
of the guild. 

The early part of the evening proved, there- 
fore, very tempestuous and windy ; but as soon 
as the various gusts of debate and declamation 
had blown over, a very plain-looking gentle- 
man, at about ten o'clock, rose, and beginning 
in a very soft voice, which seemed to grow soft- 
er as he advanced, proved himself to be a very 
sensible fellow, by calling the attention of the 
meeting to some little particulars which had 
been overlooked. These particulars consisted 
of the division and organization of the commit- 
tee into sections, enrolling their names in a 
book, each section having its own head or 
chairman, and the allotment of their duties to 
the various members of the committee. 

There was the dock committee — they want- 
ed a gentleman on that, who wouldn't feel the 
inconvenience of a tarpaulin hat, a wide-skirt- 
ed, shaggy box-coat, with two sepulchral pock- 
ets, for his fists to be carried in, at the sides, 
and who couldn't well live without a segar. 
Then, they wanted a short man for cellars and 
areas ; a thin man to go up the alleys ; a spruce- 
looking member to visit at the quality houses ; a 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



191 



supple man, of an enterprising turn, for rear- 
building and garret service, and a jolly-looking, 
portly dog, to talk with the landlords and tavern- 
keepers. 

The plain man described, in a few words and 
with becoming modesty, what he thought the 
duty of the members of the vigilance committee 
then and there assembled : they should be keen- 
eyed in discovering voters, artful and insinua- 
ting in approaching them, copious of tongue, 
subtle in argument, and prepared to clinch any- 
thing they might choose to assert. 

He thought vilifying the opposition wasn't 
bad, if it was done in a Christian-like way, and 
by describing them as "some persons," or, 
" there were people who he (the member) knew 
couldn't bear the poor ; who would take the 
last potato out of the poor man's pot," and sim- 
ilar fetches of expression. 

When this gentleman had occupied the floor 
for about an hour, Puffer Hopkins very discreet- 
ly held himself to be as well advised as to the 
services required as he was ever likely to be ; 
and determining in his own mind not to be easi- 
ly outdone and to set about his portion of the 
task on the morrow, he departed. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ADVENTURES OF PUFFER AS A SCOURER. 

The sun had certainly made up his mind, 
that morning, not to see company ; and if all 
the vigilance committees in the seventeen wards 
had turned out expressly for that purpose, it 
would have been impossible for even their well- 
known and extraordinary astuteness to have 
detected the slightest glimpse of his benevolent 
features anywhere in the very murkiest sky of 
a November day. The forty-five spirited fire- 
companies of the metropolis — who had seen 
proper, at a very early hour in the day, to take 
a run at a horse-shed near Bowling Green, 
which had extinguished itself the moment it 
was discovered nothing else could catch from it 
— might with equal propriety have turned in 
and stayed at home, smoking long-nines and 
talking over past achievements ; for the rain 
came down in torrents, and kept every combus- 
tible plank in the city as nice and moist as j 
heart could wish. 

Omnibus-drivers and hackmen cairied a ' 
proud head, and looked down on the sinful 
world of dry-goods men and in-door trades- 
people, from their box-seats, with an air of 
pleasant disdain ; and the proprietors of livery- 
stables peered forth from their small office-win- 
dows, smiling and making themselves happy 
and comfortable at the prospect, as Noah might 
have done on a similar occasion. Pedestrians 
with umbrellas looked melancholy, and buried 
themselves in their blue cottons and brown silk3 
to indicate their misanthropy ; and pedestrians 
without umbrellas looked small and miserable, 



and making the most of their wrappers, hurried 
along, in a supreme unconsciousness of the in- 
habited character of any window they might pass, 
or the identity of any possible friend in the street. 

Others pushed along, thinking more of the 
respective errands on which they were bound 
than of any violence of weather, and heeding 
the plashing shower no more than if it had been 
sunshine and fair walking. Among these was 
the resolute Hopkins, who, embowered in a 
cheap blue cotton umbrella, strided along, bent 
on the thorough and faithful discharge of his 
arduous duties as scourer or canvasser of the 
ward. 

He had selected for the first visitation, a rear 
building in a by-street, inhabited by sundry gen- 
tlemen of doubtful politics, and, making all 
proper speed, he arrived in a short time in the 
neighborhood where he intended to operate. 
Opening a blind gate, which worked with a pul- 
ley and closed swiftly behind him, Puffer found 
himself in a square enclosure, filled with carts, 
fragments of boarding, old iron pots, broken 
pieces of garden-fence standing against the 
walls, two cistern-heads, and, at the rear, a 
row of cheap wooden houses, with the windows 
dashed out, sundry breaches in the casing, and 
various red pots, supposed to contain stunted 
specimens of horticulture, arranged in the up- 
per windows. Directly in the middle of the 
yard, there stood, under one large ivory-han- 
dled umbrella, a couple of well-dressed, white- 
haired individuals — one of whom was very 
stout, portly, and commanding, and the other 
very shrunken, round-shouldered, and obsequi- 
ous — looking up at the buildings ; the portly 
gentleman staring at them with great severity 
and talking boisterously, and the round shoul- 
dered glancing up at the portly gentleman, 
meekly, and making minutes of what he said. 

'■' Draught of the chimneys, heavy ; note that 
down, will you ?" said the portly gentleman, 
peremptorily. 

" I will," said the meek man, " it's down, 
sir." 

"Supposed equal to two factory furnaces, 
with the blowers on; down with that — and put 
my initial to it, if you please." 

" I have, in large capitals," said the timid 
gentleman. 

" That's right," said the portly gentleman, 
promptly. " Scuttles always open, and chil- 
dren allowed to smoke burnt rattans — I see one 
of 'em at it now. Will you mark that down ?" 
cried the stout gentleman, evidently very much 
enraged, and with a startling emphasis that 
caused the meek man to jump out from under 
the shelter, which compelled his superior to or- 
der him back twice, very distinctly, before he 
could be induced to return to his duty, and 
chronicle what fell from the stout gentleman's 
lips. "They dry their hose at No. nine, on 
the back of a rocker before the lire, ami use a 

decayed Dutch-oven al No. eleven— this last at- 
tributable to the extravagance of the lower or- 
ders, who are too proud to patronise the baker.'' 



192 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



" That's a very happy observation," said the 
meek man, " shall I print it out large, like the 
play-bills ?" 

"Stuff!" cried the portly gentleman, smiling 
haughtily, " just mind your business, and rec- 
ollect that all private feelings are absorbed in 
the company's interests, will ye ?" 

" I'll try," said the meek man, timidly. 

" Do ! and just say, if you please, that the 
first floor's occupied by a journeyman lightning- 
maker." 

" A journeyman lightning-maker !" echoed 
the meek man. 

" None of your nonsense, now, Crump — but 
down with what I tell you ; a journeyman light- 
ning-maker in the employ of one of the theatres. 
Say we are informed that he lives on brandy 
(brandy's a pretty inflammatory article, I be- 
lieve, and cases of spontaneous combustion 
have occurred; put that reflection in a note 
and mark it J. B. in the corner), and makes 
lightning in the garret. Now for the cisterns. 
Have you smelt No. eleven ?" 

" I have, sir," answered the secretary, ma- 
king a wry face, " and it's uncommon noxious." 

"Do you know the cause ?" asked the portly 
gentleman, disdainfully. 

" I do not, sir," answered the meek gentle- 
man, groping in his pockets. 

"A child — a juvenile small child — that went 
to a public school, took his own life in despair 
one day, in that very cistern, sir, because he 
couldn't spell phthisic, sir !" 

" That was strange, wasn't it ?" 

" Very strange, Crump. The child came 
home in the afternoon, with the same green 
bag — take notice, sir — the same green bag on 
his arm that he'd carried for fourteen months, 
and said, ' Mother, there's a pain,' laying his 
hand on his head, ' a great violent pain here.' 
That was all he said, and then he went up 
stairs, made up his little couch, tied his wooden 
horse to a bed-post with a new riband about his 
neck, put on his Sunday hat and a clean apron, 
and stepping stealthily down stairs, walked 
comfortably into the cistern, and ended all his 
agonies." 

" That's a remarkable affair," said the secre- 
tary with his mouth and eyes wide open. 
" Don't you think it's a serious argument 
against the public schools, sir ?" 

" It's a smasher, Crump, an extra-hazardous 
smasher," said the insurance president, for that 
proved to be his official station. " There's 
something wrong in the system you may depend 
on it, or children would never destroy them- 
selves in this way because they can't spell diph- 
thong words of two syllables. Now to busi- 
ness, if you please. Say it's the opinion of the 
president that no engine will ever consent to 
draw water from the cistern of No. eleven ; 
that engines can't be expected to take little 
boys or little girls into their chambers and 
extinguish their bereaved parents' burning 
dwellings with the rinsings. Firemen have 
feelings (this is a moral axiom for the benefit 



of the directors), engines have works : and al- 
though the coroner did sit on the cistern-lid the 
better part of an entire night, inquiring into 
this melancholy case, and sent down several 
courageous small boys with boat-hooks, and 
called patriotically into the cistern himself, yet 
add, the boy was never found ; and from the 
fact of deceased's never having been seen to 
come out, a strong suspicion prevails in the 
neighborhood that he is still in ; but what 
makes the corpse so very outrageous and stub- 
born nobody can say. Is that it, Crump ?" 

" All down, sir," answered Mr. Crump. 

" Stand out from the umbrella, then, if you 
please, Mr. Crump : business is over. You're 
Crump and I'm Blinker." And the insurance 
president looked down upon his assistant in the 
most commanding fashion. 

Crump obeyed, and, withdrawing from the 
brown-silk protector, stood outside, awaiting 
the further pleasure of the portly gentleman. 

" This is a sweet day, Crump," said the 
president, contemplating with evident satisfac- 
tion the huge drops that plashed in one of the 
puddles. 

" Charming !" said Crump, slily inserting a 
cotton pocket-handkerchief between his coat- 
collar and the back of his neck, for Crump was 
slightly rheumatic. 

" Stocks should rise in weather like this," 
said Mr. Blinker. " The roofs are all good and 
wet, cellars under water, and a good number of 
garrets flooded. Now, if we could have a 
little rain horizontally, the second stories would 
be nice and safe. To be sure, families might 
suffer a little inconvenience, but it would be 
morally impossible for fires to show themselves, 
and I should look in the papers for two or three 
melancholy cases of incendiaries having made 
way with themselves. It's a pelter, Crump." 

"That, I believe, is admitted," answered 
that worthy individual, with a slight tinge of 
impudence in his manner — buttoning up his 
side-pockets, which began to fill, and throwing 
his hands behind him under his coat-tails, which 
arrangement, as he stooped forward, formed a 
commodious roof for the rain to run off at. 

" It's lucky we're not in the marine line," 
continued the president, glancing at the secre- 
tary, " goods not under hatches will be nicely 
soaked, I'm sure, particularly woollens and 
drabs." 

Now it so happened that the unfortunate 
Crump was the owner of a very pretty pair of 
woollen drabs — rather old fashioned to be sure 
— which, very singularly, he was wearing at 
that very moment as he stood in the shower in the 
open yard ; but, as Mr. Blinker was well known 
as a benevolent-minded gentleman, and above 
all manner of personalities, Crump was bound 
to regard his observation as one of those happy 
general reflections for which he was equally re- 
markable. 

" The shower comes down so nice and 
straight," said Mr. Blinker, erecting his um- 
brella, and drawing himself close under its 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



193 



centre, at the same lime consulting his watch, 
" so nice and straight, that it must put out a 
good many kitchen- fires ; which all helps ; but 
it's time to be at the office. Do you go on, 
Crump, and have the grate well piled, don't 
spare the coals, for I'm chilly. But stop — 
whose buildings are these, did you say?" 

" I didn't say," answered Mr. Crump, flushing 
slightly. 

" Whose ?" cried Mr. Blinker, in his official 
key, which started the secretary into a small 
pond. 

" Fyler Close's, sir," answered the intelligent 
Crump, speedily. 

" Humph ! very well," said Mr. Blinker. " Go 
on ; and don't forget to wheel my chair out and 
warm my slippers. And if the lime-dealer 
calls for his policy tell him it isn't made out, 
and that he may call the first fair day. This 
is fine weather for slacking that article, Crump; 
excellent weather to set houses on fire with 
water and white chalk — do you understand? 
Go!" 

At this the secretary picked his way through 
the yard, carrying his head obliquely to avoid 
the rain that dashed directly in his face, and 
holding the gate for a moment, was followed 
by the superior functionary, in great state ; 
who paused once or twice, however, and turned 
about to take a glance at the buildings under 
survey for insurance. 

" Very well," said Puffer Hopkins, stepping 
out from under a shed where he had ambushed 
himself during this instructive conversation; 
" these gentlemen must be on the relief com- 
mittee, they have a wonderful tenderness for 
poor people, and wouldn't see 'em made martyrs 
of by a conflagration, for all the world. Let 
me see ; I think I'll visit the lightning-maker 
in the garret, first. He's a genius, no doubt, 
and, belonging to the melo-dramatic school, 
may dazzle two or three weak minds in the 
neighborhood." 

With these words the young politician pro- 
ceeded to the house which had been pointed out 
as the residence of the lightning-maker, and 
knocked gently at the door. 

The summons was answered by a small girl, 
with an unclean face and eyes that twinkled 
through the dirt like a ground-mole's, who gave 
him to understand that the gentleman in ques- 
tion was at that moment in the garret of the 
building, busy upon a two-quarter, and that he, 
Puffer Hopkins, if he went up stairs, had better 
come upon him cautiously, lest he might, in the 
confusion of a sudden surprise, let slip a vol- 
cano, or something horrible of that nature in 
the combustible line. 

Taking to heart the suggestion of the small 
adviser, Puffer walked up stairs, and knocked 
at the door of the artisan's laboratory with 
great discretion, beginning with a rap in the 
very lowest key, and ascending gradually to a 
clear double-knock. • 

"Hold a minute," cried a voice from within, 
" till I mix in a trifle of rod and blue. If you 
N 



should come in now," continued the voice, 
pondering and speaking a word or two only at 
a time, as if it was interrupted by some manual 
operation, " you'd lose us three good rounds 
with the pit. They always loves to see a sheet 
of red fire, provided there's a cross of blue in it." 

In a moment Puffer was admitted, and dis- 
covered a lean man bending over a mortar with 
great staring eyes and cheeks discolored with 
brimstone or yellow fumes of some other kind ; 
and surrounded by black bottles, two or three 
broken pestles, an iron retort, and various other 
implements of his trade. Puffer introduced 
himself and proceeded at once to the exercise 
of his function as a scourer. 

" This profession of yours," said Puffer — he 
dared not call it a trade, although the poor 
workman was up to his eyes in vile yellow paste 
and charcoal-dust — " this profession, six-, must 
give you many patriotic feelings of a high caste, 
sir." 

" It does, sir," answered the lightning-maker, 
slightly mistaking his meaning ; " I've told the 
manager more than fifty times that lightning 
such as mine is worth ninepence a bottle ; but 
he never would pay more than fourpence-ha'- 
penny, except in volcanoes — them's always two 
quarters." 

" I mean, sir," continued the scourer, " that 
when you see the vivid fires blazing on Lake 
Erie — when Perry's working his ship about like 
a velocipede, and the guns are bursting off, and 
the enemy is paddling away like ducks — is not 
your soul then stirred, sir ? Do you not feel 
impelled to achieve some great — some glorious 
act ? What do you do — what can you do — in 
such a moment of intense, overwhelming excite- 
ment ?" 

"J generally," answered the lightning-maker, 
with an emphasis upon the personal pronoun, 
as if some difference of practice might possibly 
prevail, " I generally takes a glass of beer, with 
the froth on." 

" But, sir, when you see the dwelling-house 
roof, kindled by your bomb-shells, all a-blaze 
with the midnight conflagration — the rafters 
melting away, I may say, with the intense heat, 
and the engines working their pumps in vain — 
don't you think then, sir, of some peaceful fam- 
ily, living in some secluded valley, broken in 
upon by the heartless incendiary with his demon 
matches, and burning down their cottage with 
all its out-houses ?" 

"In such cases," answered the lightning-ma- 
ker, " I thinks of my two babies at home, with 
their poor lame mother ; and I makes it a point, 
if my feelings is very much wrought up, as the 
prompter says, to run home between the acts 
to see that all's safe, and put a bucket of water 
by the hearth. Isn't that the thing ?" 

" I think it is ; and I'm glad to hear you talk 
so feelingly," answered Puller Hopkins; "our 
next mayor's a very domestic-minded man — just 
such a man as you are, only 1 don't believe he'd 
be so prudent and active about the bucket on 
the hearth." 



194 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



At this the lightning-maker smiled pleasant- 
ly to himself, and unconsciously thrust a large 
roll of brimstone in his cheek. 

" Is this your natural complexion that you 
have on this morning ?" resumed Puffer Hop- 
kins, seeing how well the personal compliment 
took, and glancing at the lightning-maker's yel- 
low chaps. " If it is, the resemblance between 
yourself and the gentleman I have mentioned 
is more striking than I could have expected. 
His nose is a copper. Isn't yours inclining a 
little that way ?" 

" I believe it is," answered the journeyman 
lightning-maker, complacently. 

" Your eye is a deep gray, I think, as far as 
I can see it by this light : that's what the Com- 
mittee of Nomination, when they waited on the 
next mayor, thought was his." 

In the flutter of nerves created by the scour- 
er's instituting these pleasant comparisons, the 
lightning-maker unadvisedly brought together 
a couple of hostile combustibles, which occa- 
sioned the premature bursting of a small bottle 
of azure lightning, without scenery to match ; 
and a small skylight was opened thereby through 
a decayed shingle in the roof. Instructed by 
this, of the tropical climate of the lightning-ma- 
ker's garret, and thinking that a sufficient train 
had been laid for a future vote, Puffer — who 
had been advised of the residence of a stout 
cobbler in the neighboring attic — trotted up a 
ladder, and through the open scuttle, and 
scrambling over the pitched roof, plunged down 
a similar opening in the next house, and came 
very suddenly upon the object he sought. The 
burly shoemaker was seated on a cobbler's 
bench, working away merrily enough. At his 
side was laid a long clay pipe, filled ready to be 
lighted, and hard by him a bundle of chattels, 
corded up and arranged apparently for instant 
transpertation. 

" How is this ?" cried the cobbler, as his eye 
caught the person of Puffer Hopkins; "this 
isn't fair — nor is it legal in any courts, whether 
of chancery or common law. Writs don't de- 
scend, sir — I know enough for that. No depu- 
ty-sheriff was ever enough of an angel to come 
from above. I resist process ! Do you hear 
that ?" 

Saying this, the cobbler started up, and seiz- 
ing his bench, planted it on end in front of 
the corded bale of chattels, and standing be- 
tween the two, he glared fiercely through the 
circular broken seat of the bench on the sus- 
pected deputy. 

A few words, however, calmed his agitation : 
he threw down his bench, resumed his seat, 
and, in token of his perfect satisfaction and 
pleasure in the explanation Puffer had given of 
the character in which he visited him, he kin- 
dled his pipe and smoked away in good, long, 
hearty puffs. 

Growing communicative, as their intercourse 
continued, Puffer at length learned that the 
gentleman was the proprietor of the Dutch oven 
down stairs j the terror of Mr. Blinker, the 



president ; was greatly distressed by creditors, 
who hunted him with catchpoles and marshals 
from morning till night ; that all his proprietary 
interest on the lower floors lay in the oven 
aforesaid, and a very comfortable little fat wife 
(whose pride and comfort consisted in a turkey 
Drowned before a slow fire), and other little 
necessaries allowed by law. The corded bale 
held his valuables ; and with these he was pre- 
pared to mount, at a moment's warning, through 
the scuttle, and to convey himself to the peak 
of the house, where he made it a point to sit in 
the shadow of a broad chimney and smoke his 
pipe at ease, until the cloud of pursuers was 
fairly dispersed or blown over. 

" They shall never catch me while I live," 
cried the cobbler, energetically. " If they come 
on the roof, I'll climb down the lightning-rod 
with that bundle on my back. I can do it, and 
if one of the rascals attempts to climb up to me, 
I'll drop it, and break his neck off short — de- 
pend on that. My dear fellow, I'd be at the 
expense of the board, lodging, and education of 
a South American condor, and teach him to bear 
it off in his beak, before they should touch a 
thread of it. Now you know my mind !" 

At this he struck a thick heel, on which he 
was at work, a thumping blow with his ham- 
fr^er, and kicked his lapstone across the whole 
breadth of the garret. 

Puffer Hopkins of course applauded the spirit 
of the cobbler, and artlessly suggested that no 
man, with the soul of a man, would submit qui- 
etly to such impertinent intermeddling with his 
private affairs. 

" However, my friend," he continued, scour- 
ing as industriously as be well knew how, " I 
trust this will not always be so. These gen- 
tlemen of the law may yet have their combs 
cut. I don't think they will always be al- 
lowed to crow and chanticleer it over honest 
men !" 

" Why not ?" asked the cobbler, looking at 
Puffer Hopkins anxiously, and planting his 
great hands upon his knees. 

" For no very particular reason," answered 
the scourer, " except that I have heard it sug- 
gested that our new common council — mind, I 
say our new common council — will abolish the 
office of sheriff, and all others that interfere 
with the enjoyment of a man's property by him- 
self. They'll do away with writs and execu- 
tions, and all that sort of thing," said Puffer, 
coolly—" that's all !" 

" Say you so ?" shouted the cobbler, spring- 
ing from his bench and seizing Puffer by the 
hand — " I'm your man ! Now try your luck on 
the down-stairs people ; don't let me keep you 
back a minute. Try the bereaved mother down 
stairs. Her husband's a wavering : have him 
by all means. Dogs ! you've done me more 
good than the sight of the big boot in the square 
the first time I set eyes on it. God speed you ! 
Luck to you !" , 

With these ejaculations, the cobbler dismissed 
his comforting visiter, who hurried below, and 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



195 



opening, according to the instructions he had 
received, the first door to the right, arrived at 
a new field in the domain to be canvassed. 

Taking a rapid and comprehensive survey, 
Puffer Hopkins was aware that he had entered 
the apartment of the bereaved mother; for 
there upon the mantel, in a glass case, dressed 
in crape, stood the identical wooden horse, with 
the riband about his neck that had been at- 
tached to the bed-post by the little misanthrope, 
on the day he had taken his own life in the cis- 
tern. 

As he discovered this, a gloom suddenly came 
over the countenance of the scourer, and he 
approached the afflicted parent with an aspect 
as wo-begone and dolorous as the wood-cut 
frontispiece of the most melancholy mourner's 
companion ever printed. 

" Mr. Hopkins, of the ward committee," said 
Puffer, advancing and taking the bereaved one 
by the hand. " The good man of the house is 
not in, I think ?" 

"No, he isn't, sir," she answered; " it's ve- 
ry little that he is in now, since the event — he 
can't bear the sight, poor man, of that grievous 
monument there" — pointing to the quadruped 
in the glass case — " always in his sight. It 
e'en a'most drives him mad." 

Puffer Hopkins wondered — if the sight of a 
miserable caricature of a horse in wood, under 
a glass cover, was so near making a lunatic of 
him — why he didn't go mad at once, like a sen- 
sible man, and shiver it all in atoms, which 
would have done something toAvard making it 
invisible ; but he didn't utter these thoughts, 
but, on the contrary, kept them hidden in the 
very darkest recess of his bosom. 

" You do right, madam," continued Puffer, 
" to keep that constantly before your eyes. It's 
a softening object — a mellowing spectacle — for 
the heart to contemplate. Oh, no; there is 
nothing — there can be nothing" — pursued the 
scourer, in a voice choked with agony, and turn- 
ing away as if he was too manly to expose his 
feelings, " like a mother's grief. A mother's 
grief— it is a sacred and a solemn thing ; and 
when the affliction comes thus — in this ghastly 
shape — it's too much to think of. Who can 
repress their tears at the thought of the agony 
of this family, on the day of this fatal discov- 
ery ? The father frantic with sorrow and ex- 
ertions to get the body ; sisters and brothers — 
how many have you, madam ?" 

" Five small ones — one at the breast." 

" Five little ones, shouting for the departed 
angel ; and his mother — his poor, bereaved, 
broken-hearted mother — when she thinks of 
the suit he had on, his nice, tidy, Sunday suit, 
bends over the cistern and drops in her tears 
till it overflows ! — Oh, there's a picture for the 
moralist and the patriot !" 

" Don't, sir, don't," cried the afflicted mother. 
" Don't — your eloquence quite breaks my heart ; 
it makes me feel it all over again." 

" I will not," said Puffer, "I'll resist my feel- 
ings, and say no more about it ; not if you'll be 



good enough to take this little order on the dry- 
goods dealer — just so that the poor boy, if he 
should ever be found, may be put in a decent 
shroud ; he was a small boy, I think — the or- 
der's for a small boy, a very small boy ; and 
oblige me by telling your husband that Puffer 
Hopkins, of the vigilance committee, called. 
Good day— good day— poor child!" Uttering 
these last words with a pathetic glance at the 
toy on the mantel, and heaving a profound 
sigh, the scourer closed the door. 

With the door, he closed his labors for the 
day, and shaped his course homeward, satisfied 
that he had done his country some slight ser- 
vice, and that two or three minds, at least, 
had been sufficiently enlightened to vote the 
proper ticket at the next charter election. 



CHAPTER IX. 

AN ENTERTAINMENT AT MR. FISHBLATT's. 

A few mornings after his adventures as scour- 
er, Puffer Hopkins was sitting at his desk in the 
Fork, earnestly engaged in the preparation and 
composition of a handbill, for the approaching 
election. That this was a sufficiently arduous 
undertaking for the young politician, was 
proved by the great multitude of model pla- 
cards strewn about the floor, from which he at 
intervals solaced himself with a line or two ; 
by the blank looks with which he at times en- 
tirely halted in his task; and by the painful 
gaze he occasionally directed toward the wall, 
as if he expected to discover there handwriting 
wherewith to eke out the unfinished sentence. 
Having a good eye for catching phrases, and 
considerable readiness in sounding words that 
would tell well in the popular ear, the compo- 
sition presently flowed apace; line upon line 
lengthened out, Puffer reciting each aloud as it 
was finished, and in the course of about two 
hours, a thundering manifesto, doomed soon to 
echo back from wall, shutter, bulk-head, and 
houseside, great words of fearful import, and 
to set the whole world of meeting-hunters and 
politicians astir, was completed. 

Puffer Hopkins was clearing his throat and 
preparing for a grand rehearsal of this master- 
piece, when he was suddenly confronted by a 
frouzy-headed small girl, who had got into the 
apartment, it seemed to him — for he had no no- 
tice of her entrance — by some underhand jug- 
glery or legerdemain, and who, assuming a lace 
of great mystery, levelled at him a diminutive 
billet, with a faint streak of gold about its 
edges, and his own name written elaborately 
on the back. 

" Compliments — hopes as how you'll come— 
and wishes the bearer to say, wouldn't feel 
cheerful if Mr. Hopkins should fail;'- said the 

frou/y-haired girl reciting something that had 
been, evidently, ticketed and laid away in hci 
mind, to be delivered when called for, 



19G 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



Three lines of writing and a date within, 
worked out, obviously, with painful toil and a 
great variety of pens, explained the object of 
the small visiter, in a request that " Mr. P. 
Hopkins would favor Mr. H. Fishblatt with 
company at seven o'clock this (Thursday) even- 
ing, at the sign of the brass-plate and chimney- 
pots, as before ;" giving him at the same time 
street and number. 

Puffer was in fine spirits, for he had been suc- 
cessful in his literary labors — and what au- 
thor's heart is not a-glow when his invention 
proves ready, and his hand runs free across the 
page ? — and he accepted the note with great 
complaisance, and bade the frouzy-haired mes- 
senger (who stood staring at the huge text 
scattered about the floor, as if the great black 
letters might be ogres, giants, or some other 
monsters) inform Mr. Fishblatt he would attend 
his summons with the utmost pleasure. 

He was as good as his word ; and two hours 
before the time named in the invitation, Puffer 
began to prepare for the party at Fishblatt's. 
First and foremost, he drew forth from a case, 
in the corner of his lodgings, a brass-buttoned, 
blue coat, of a popular cut, and fell to beat- 
ing it over the shoulders and down the back 
with a yardstick, as if he had under his hand 
the body and person of his direst enemy in the 
world ; then he twisted the right arm up and 
dashed at the place where the ribs might have 
been ; then he fell upon the breasts and pum- 
melled them horribly ; and then, casting aside 
his stick, he fastened fiercely on the collar, and 
gave the whole a mighty shaking, as if he 
would have the very life out of it. A pair of light 
drab cloth pantaloons, dragged from the same 
confinement, shared in like manner at his 
hands ; a striped vest was stretched on the back 
of a chair like a rack ; then his boots were 
forced into a high polish, the pantaloons drawn 
on, the vest released, and the coat occupied by 
its legitimate lord, and Puffer, first attitude- 
nizing a little before the long glass, and run- 
ning his fingers through his hair — to get his 
head as nearly as possible into the model he had 
in his eye of a great politician, whose portrait 
was in the gallery at the museum — Avas ready 
for the party. Sallying gently forth, and march- 
ing steadily through the streets, with a secret 
conviction that every eye in the metropolis was 
fixed immovably upon him, he shortly discov- 
ered the great brass plate of Halsey Fishblatt 
gleaming through the dark, where he knocked, 
waited for a minute in a state of awful suspense, 
and was admitted, as before, by the message- 
bearer, who came to the door with a face wrin- 
kled with smiles, and strongly suggestive of 
something very nice and choice to be had with- 
in. The small girl asked Puffer to be good 
enough to go to the third-story back room, and 
thither he proceeded ; encountering on his way, 
and at the base of the second flight of stairs, 
a fry of dolorous-looking gentlemen, who lin- 
gered about the parlor-door, pulling down their 
wristbands and contemplating it, as it opened 



and shut, with as much dread as if it had been 
the gate of the doomed ; while others hovered 
about the great balustrade of the staircase, in 
waiting for the descent of their lady partners 
from the third-story front room above. Every 
now and then an angelic creature, in a white 
gown and abundant pink ribands, came down 
this Jacob's ladder, and, fastening upon the 
arm of one of the sentinels, they marched into 
the parlor with great state. Returning from his 
toilet up stairs, Puffer Hopkins followed the 
general current, and discovered a scene the so- 
lemnity whereof was exceedingly impressive 
and disheartening. 

The walls of the parlor upon which he had 
entered were lined all round with well-dressed 
ladies and gentlemen, sitting as erect as corpses, 
and gazing into the empty space in the middle 
of the apartment, as if some curious meteoro- 
logical phenomenon were going on there, in 
which they all had a special interest. At the 
announcement of Puffer Hopkins by a pale 
young gentleman at the door, the corpses 
waked up a little, some twittered spasmodical- 
ly, a few moved uneasily in their chairs, and 
by the time Puffer had attained a seat in the 
corner, the company had again subsided into 
its condition of tomb-like repose. 

They were presently, however, again wa- 
kened — and with rather more success — by the 
entrance of the host, Mr. Fishblatt himself, 
bearing before him, firstly, a huge ruffle, which 
stood straight out from his bosom like a main- 
sail, and secondly, reposing in the shadow of 
the said ruffle, a black teaboard of proportion- 
ate dimensions, garnished with small jugs or 
tumblers of lemonade. 

Mr. Fishblatt walked very erect and majes- 
tically, and holding the waiter at arms' length 
— smiling pleasantly, as a gentleman always 
does when he's engaged in a business he knows 
himself to be altogether too good for, but which 
the crisis of affairs requires him to look after 
— presented it to the ladies all around, begin- 
ning at the left hand, as he was bound to do, 
and skipping ever so many thirsty gentlemen 
who gloated on the small jugs ; and then com- 
ing down toward the right hand, as he was like- 
wise bound, he allowed the thirsty gentlemen to 
glean from the waiter the tumblers that re- 
mained. It is not to be supposed that Mr. Hal- 
sey Fishblatt all this time held his peace ; oft 
the contrary, the bearing of the waiter was not 
a tithe of his toils, for he kept strenuously urg- 
ing, wherever he went, the propriety of taking 
a tumbler — the necessity of a draught of the 
lemonade to cool themselves, and particularly 
soliciting and entreating the ladies to make a 
paradise of his (Mr. Fishblatt's) parlors, by 
enjoying themselves with all their might and 
main. 

The lemonade had scarcely vanished and the 
empty tumblers been gathered and borne out of 
sight, when it was announced — to the discom- 
fiture and confusion of the company — that the 
celebrated and distinguished representative of 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



197 



the thirteenth ward in the city councils — Al- 
derman Punchwind, by name — was in the house 
— having, as it was understood, done Mr. Fish- 
blatt the honor to call in and partake of the 
agreeable hospitalities that were then and there 
going forward. Mr. Fishblatt, at the thought 
of so august a presence, recoiled a little, but 
recovering speedily, a deputation was immedi- 
ately sent out, consisting of Puffer Hopkins and 
two young gentlemen who wore large watch- 
seals and were rather ambitious of office and em- 
ployment of this kinu, to wait upon his eminence. 
In a few minutes a heavy tread was heard up- 
on the stair, a commotion in the entry, and in 
stalked, in a broad-brimmed hat, a portly, ca- 
pacious, and solid gentleman, of such dimen- 
sions as to resemble not a little a great school- 
globe, stepped out of its brass ring, and taking 
a walk of pleasure. In he marched, accompa- 
nied by his delegation, who clung close to his 
skirts to watch the impression his presence 
might make on the commonalty assembled. 

Puffer Hopkins had a glimmering reminis- 
cence of a broad-brimmed hat, very much like 
the alderman's, escaping into a pantry at the 
end of the hall as he came in at the beginning 
of the evening, worn by Crump — could it be so ? 
— Crump, the meek secretary who had been 
so browbeaten in the shower by Mr. Blinker. 
His brows overshadowed by the huge hat, and 
his chin buried in a capacious collar, Alderman 
Punchwind paused for a minute at the door, 
glanced about slowly and with an air of solemn 
importance, and then, without removing his hat 
or uttering a word, stalked across the parlor, 
proceeded to fill a glass from the sideboard, 
where relays of refreshment in liberal quanti- 
ties were arranged, and at this moment, deign- 
ing to turn around and recognise the company, 
he intimated by a look that he would drink all 
their good healths ; which he did, very emphatic- 
ally absorbing his wine much as the Norwegian 
Maelstrom might if it were a coxporate alder- 
man and fed at the public charge. Having dis- 
posed of the wine, the alderman next devoted 
his attention to the cake and other eatables, of 
which great batches disappeared from time to 
time ; with a pause now and then, to allow him 
to vary the entertainment with a friendly re- 
turn, just to show he hadn't forgotten it, to the 
decanter; which proceedings were watched 
with painful interest by Mr. Fishblatt's guests 
— who were horrified at the miraculous disap- 
pearance of the provision for the party, and 
who looked upon the performance much as they 
would at the elephant at the menagerie, feed- 
ing with a bale or two of hay, or the pagan 
anaconda at the museum, lunching on a pair of 
fowls and a live rabbit, without so much as a 
grace to the meal. 

As soon as Alderman Punchwind had con- 
cluded his corporate banquet by stripping the 
board of something more than two thirds of its 
contents, solid and liquid, he wiped his lips, 
and inarching steadily toward the centre of the 
rooms, there planted himself by the side of a 
13 



column and looked abroad upon the company, 
fixing his eye, now and then, with peculiar 
sternness, on some young lady who happened 
to be fairer than her neighbors. 

After he had enjoyed this recreation for some 
time, various members of the company were 
brought up by Mr. Fishblatt and introduced (by 
consent) to the distinguished functionary, who 
kept his ground manfully and received them all 
with an air of bland and gracious condescen- 
sion ; allowing each of them to take him by the 
hand and to enjoy a few minutes' contempla- 
tion of his very classic and expressive features, 
and then pass off, making room for others. 

While this was proceeding, attention was 
drawn toward the door, by the entrance of a 
very uppish gentleman of a severe aspect, who 
carried himself with great state and port, and 
cast his eyes disdainfully about, as if he held 
the individuals of both sexes and all ages there 
assembled supremely cheap and of no account 
whatever in making up anything like an accu- 
rate scale of society. 

This disdainful and evidently select person- 
age was no other than John Blinker, Esq., 
first director and president of the Phoenix Fire 
Company below stairs, who, as soon as he had 
heard there was a live alderman in the room, 
came forward extending his hand and smiling 
pleasantly, quite anxious, it would seem, to 
conciliate the favor of a mighty alderman and 
common council-man. These overtures on the 
part of Mr. Blinker were received by the alder- 
man, however, with an air of slight disdain, 
which caused the president to cower and fall 
back a little until Mr. Punchwind thought 
proper to relax his features, when the presi- 
dent advanced again, and had the satisfaction 
at last, and after many difficulties, of taking 
him by the hand. 

" Do I understand that the fire-limits of the 
city are to be extended ?" asked Mr. Blinker, 
whose mind hovered about the fiery principle 
of his calling like a moth about a flame, after 
waiting in vain for a communication from the 
alderman. 

The question was asked, but not answered ; 
for Alderman Punchwind, reclining his head a 
little toward his questioner, allowed a smile to 
spread over his features — as much as to say, 
you don't know how important, how critical, 
and how solemn a question you have put to me 
— and said not a word. 

"I think it would be an advantage to the 
city to have them extended, sir. I hope I am 
not so unfortunate as to differ in opinion with 
Alderman Punchwind !" said Mr. Blinker meek- 

The alderman only smiled again, intimating 
thereby, apparently, that there were state rea- 
sons why this anxious interrogatory of the great 
president's couldn't be answered just then. 

At this moment, Pufier Hopkins, who had 
overheard the questions of Mr. Blinker, and en- 
tertaining a becoming reverence for the distin- 
guished individual before him — feeling, loo, 



198 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



perhaps, that a modicum of metropolitan infor- 
mation from the very fountain head, on a sub- 
ject in which he felt an interest, from his fre- 
quent professional pilgrimages to political meet- 
ings, lectures, and other night-resorts, might be 
serviceable — impelled by some, or all of these 
considerations, Puffer proceeded to ask, in a 
tone of profound respect, " Whether they were 
to have new windows in the public lamps ?" 

" New lamp-windows did you ask ?" retorted 
the alderman, as plainly as he could without 
the trouble of opening his lips. 

"I did, sir," reiterated Puffer Hopkins, be- 
ginning to feel rhetorically inclined, and so un- 
derstanding the learned gentlemen, " and know- 
ing the interest felt in the answer, and your 
ability to give us a clear and decisive reply, I 
put it to you in this public manner ; whether 
we are to have new glasses in the public lamps ! 
A gust of wind in our streets of a dark night 
is equal to an eclipse of the sun in broad day, 
in their present dilapidated condition. The ! 
darkness of Egypt overspreads this city, sir, at I 
times ; a Siberian darkness where bears and | 
catamounts might dwell, perhaps, if it were 
not for the city police and our vigilant magis- 
tracy." 

The alderman paused and looked about him 
with a grave and majestic air. He seemed re- 
luctant to respond. 

"It's your duty, sir," said Mr. Fishblatt, 
coming in at this crisis, standing directly in front 
of the alderman, and looking him steadily in 
the face, " to inform us of your views on this 
all-important subject. The happiness of this 
community is dependent on it, sir. There'll be 
an immense oversetting of hacks, breakage of 
legs, and fracture of skulls, if things remain in 
their present condition, I can tell you. This 
metropolis is as black now, sir, at night, as the 
bottom of an ink-bottle, and people float about 
the streets at random, like so many bugs on the 
surface of a dark pool. What's all the crime ' 
of this great city owing to, sir ? Some will say 
its intemperance and a neglect of the public 
pumps. Others will say it's ignorance, and 
neglect of the public schools. Some will tell 
you it's because we've got too many peniten- 
tiaries and houses of refuge, and others will 
tell you it's because they're too few. Pumps, 
penitentiaries, and public schools, can't explain 
it ; it's your miserable public lamps, sir ! It's 
your knavish oil-men, and your rascally glaziers, 
that are corrupting us every day and every night 
— more particularly at night. They're the origin 
of your dissolute sons, your profligate daugh- 
ters, your sinful judges, and your dishonest 
clerks. Nobody comes out at noon and makes 
a beast of himself in the street. Keep the 
city well lighted and you keep it virtuous, sir. 
You should have a lamp at the front of every 
tenement, and where the streets are so narrow 
that the houses might catch from the wick, 
you should have men moving up and down with j 
great lanterns, and keep all the thoroughfares 
and alleys in a glow. You wouldn't have a j 



murder once in a century, and as for burglaries 
and larcenies, they'd be forgotten crimes, like 
the Phoenix, sir, and the Megalosaurius !" 

At the termination of this earnest appeal the 
company had gathered in a body about the per- 
son of the alderman, and stood waiting, with 
intense interest for his answer. Alderman 
Punchwind, hereupon, canvassed the assem- 
blage with great deliberation, and, having 
finished, elevated the fore-finger of his right 
hand and passed it significantly down his nose, 
despatched a sagacious wink toward Mr. Blin- 
ker with his sinister eye, and mildly muttering 
" Smoked beans," departed. 

Can it create surprise to know that the com- 
pany there assembled by invitation of Mr. 
Fishblatt, were astounded at this strange and 
unseemly exit of the distinguished gentleman 
from the thirteenth ward ? that Mr. Fishblatt 
was horrified and stricken with amaze ? that 
Mr. Blinker was indignant ? that the delegation 
that had waited upon the alderman felt slightly 
humiliated and abashed at the conduct of their 
superior ? That Purler Hopkins was profound- 
ly penetrated with a sense of the uncertainty 
of human affairs — for had there not been here 
an individual occupying, but a minute before, 
the highest conceivable pinnacle, the very 
Himalayah-top of human greatness attainable 
at a small party — and hadn't that individual, 
with most suicidal rashness, pitched himself 
off headlong into the very centre of a low vul- 
gar kitchen-garden, by an allusion to fumigated 
beans ? 

The entertainment was now, in truth, at an 
end ; and although fragments of cake and fag- 
ends of decanters, generously left by Alderman 
Punchwind, were from time to time brought 
forward, the spirits of the party flagged. Mr. 
Fishblatt hung his head ; and when, at a few 
minutes of midnight, the insurance president 
disappeared, the party gradually broke up ; two 
or three, at first, leaving at a time, and then a 
shoal of half a dozen, and in less than an 
hour the rooms were deserted. 

Puffer Hopkins, who had gallantly assumed 
the charge of a young lady with a pair of pier- 
cing black eyes, who lived in a remote suburb 
with which Puffer was by no means familiar, 
spent the remainder of the night, up to three 
o'clock, in piloting the young lady homeward, 
and the balance, till dawn, in discovering his 
way back again through divers crooks and 
crosses, through streets that ran at first directly 
for half a mile into town, and then directly for 
half a mile more out again ; getting now and 
then into a road that had no outlet, and then into 
one that had an outlet that led into nothing. 

The mysterious proceedings of Alderman 
Punchwind, it should be stated, remain to this 
day unexplained. On inquiry a few days after 
the entertainment, Mr, Fishblatt was assured 
that on the night in question, Alderman Puneh- 
wind, the authentic and accredited representa- 
tive of the thirteenth ward, was in his own 
room laboriously employed on a report of fifty- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



199 



three pages foolscap, on the subject of spiles 
and pier-heads, and hadn't left it for a moment, 
except to step over the way to his neighbor the 
timber-merchant, to get a few facts to put in 
his report. It therefore only remained for ru- 
mor to say that this was the apparition of the 
alderman ; which was confirmed with the super- 
stitious by Mr. Punchwind's being carried off 
just seven days afterward by an apoplexy, at 
one of the city suppers. Others thought it 
might have been all a dream and delusion on 
the part of the company, who may be reason- 
ably supposed to have been at the time under 
the influence of Mr. Fishblatt's good cheer : 
and others again — and certain mysterious smiles 
on the part of the frouzy-haired servant girl 
hinted as much — would not be beaten from the 
belief that it was Crump ; Crump, the humble 
secretary of the Phoenix Fire Company, him- 
self; who had adopted this method, it was sug- 
gested, of enjoying one first-rate banquet which 
his own salary didn't admit of, and at the same 
time of retaliating the severities of his superior ; 
having the entire pleasure of both amusements, 
the feast and the revenge, to himself, which 
was very characteristic. 

For ourselves we rather incline to this last 
solution, inasmuch as the subject of Mr. Fish- 
blatt's party was, from the time of the starting 
of this hypothesis, a forbidden subject thence- 
forth and for ever in the office of the Phoenix 
Company, by express order of Mr. Blinker, 
who said it was altogether too frivolous to 
think of. 



CHAPTER X. 

HOBBLESHANK AT HIS LODGINCxS. 

The interest with which Mr. Fyler Close 
watched the flight of Hobbleshank was by no 
means diminished, when he discovered faring 
forth from behind a stable-door, where he had 
lain in ambush, and keeping, at an easy dis- 
tance, diligently in the track of the wrathful 
old gentleman, no other than Ishmael Small. 
Speeding along in a very eccentric route, some- 
times on the pavement, again in the middle of 
the road, and then, with one foot on the kerb 
and one in the gutter, Hobbleshank made his 
way through the straitened purlieu of Pell 
street — Pell street that lies just off the great 
thoroughfare of the Bowery with a world of its 
own, where great mackerel-venders' trumpets, 
nearly as long as the street itself, are blown 
all day long ; where vegetable-wagons choke 
the way and keep up a reek of greens and pot- 
herbs until high noon, and where, if all the 
signs and omens that pervade the street — 
sights, sounds, and smells — are of any worth, 
the denizens lead a retired life, with a lenten 
diet, ignorant of what the great world beyond 
may think of beeflcss dinners or breakfasts af- 
ter Pythagoras. 



Through this choice precinct they sped, Hob- 
bleshank pushing swiftly on, and his pursuer fol- 
lowing at a distance with equal pace, darting 
in at entry-doors and out again in a glance, to 
avoid discovery, if the old man should look 
back ; and so they soon entered the mouth of 
Doyer street — the Corkscrew lane — through 
which it needs skilful pilotage to bear one safe- 
ly, every house a turn, and every kerbstone set 
at a different angle, for thus, like a many-joint- 
ed snake, Doyer street creeps out of the damp 
and green-grown marsh of Pell street, upon 
the open, sunny slope of Chatham square. 

Following the whim of the street, which 
must needs have its way, they got forth into 
the broad region of the square along which 
Hobbleshank speeded at a good round rate, 
while Mr. Small regaled himself with an elee- 
mosynary ride on the foot-board of a hackney- 
coach, where he sat comfortably balanced and 
keeping the old man in view until they reached 
Mulberry street, when he dismounted — just in 
time to evade the crack of a whip from the box- 
seat — and followed Hobbleshank warily into a 
building some dozen or two paces off of the 
main street. It was a dark, ruinous, gloomy- 
looking old house, — built on a model that was 
lost twenty years ago and never found again — 
and had a wide, greedy hall, that swallowed up 
as many chairs, tables, and other fixtures, as 
the various tenants chose to cast into it. 

Up the broad, rambling stairs Hobbleshank 
ascended, and by the time he had attained a 
cramped room at the head of the second flight, 
Mr. Small had accomplished the same journey, 
crept along and clambered up a narrow cornice 
in the throat of the hall, and gaining, by an 
exercise of dexterity peculiar to himself, a small 
window in the wall, was looking very calmly 
and reflectively through the same at two aged 
women upon whose presence Hobbleshank had 
entered. 

One of them sat by the hearth ; she was 
small and shrivelled, with a pinched and wrin- 
kled countenance — so shrivelled and thin, and 
seemingly void of life-like qualities, as if she 
hovered only on the borders of the world, and 
was ready to go at any moment's summons. 
The other was stouter, though she too was 
wrinkled with years and bore in her features the 
traces of many past cares,which she seemed zeal- 
ous to make known by larding her discourse 
with great sighs, which she heaved at the rate 
of twenty a minute, while she bustled about the 
chamber and busied herself in various house- 
hold offices. 

These scarcely noticed the entrance of Hob- 
bleshank, who opened the door gently, and, 
stealing in, proceeded to a corner of the room, 
where, taking a chair and turning his back up- 
on them, he bowed his head upon his hand and 
was silent. 

" I tell you — you have been a blessed woman. 
Dorothy — that you have," cried the elder, in a 
sharp, wiry voice from the chimney-corner, 
where she was painfully employed in rubbing 



200 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



her withered palms together over the blaze, " a 
blessed woman. There was my firstborn, Tom, 
with as handsome a pair of blue eyes as moth- 
er ever looked at, didn't he fall into the old 
brewery well, and die there, like a malt-rat, 
shouting for help, which came, of course, just 
the minute after he was stifled. Always so — 
always so, I tell you !" 

" Whose roof was blown off in the great Sep- 
tember gale — yours or mine, Aunt Gatty ? I'd 
like to know that," rejoined the other, heaving 
a sigh of course. " Whose son was buried in 
a trance for three days and better, and when 
he comes to again has to be taught his alpha- 
bet all over like a suckling child ? Your loss — 
Lord preserve us ! — was a drop in the bucket, 
so speaking, when the brewers wound it up — 
nothing more." 

And the stout old lady laughed gently at the 
thought of the brawny brewers tugging away 
at the rope for so lively a hoist, and then fell 
straightway to sighing. 

" Why, you talk like a simpleton," answered 
the other, sharply, " a natural simpleton in a 
dotage ; there was a child of mine, Dorothy, 
you mind it well — you used to say he had 
hawk's eyes — so wild and bright and glancing. 
That boy went mad, I think, and struck at me 
— me, his mother — and that you know, too, for 
many's the look you've taken at the old scar — 
me, who had watched his steps all through in- 
fancy and childhood and boyhood, up to the 
very manhood that gave him strength to strike ; 
smote her down to the earth-was it he or the 
fiend that did it ? — and would have snatched 
her life away, but for the men who beat him 
off like a dog. There was Joe, too, my dear," 
continued Aunt Gatty, " that went down of a 
dark, drearisome night, in the wild Gulf stream, 
crying Heaven's help ! in vain, and snatching 
at the waves, as Old Buncle, the shipmaster, 
told me, like a madman." The old woman 
shook as in a palsy, and waved her head pain- 
fully to and fro, as she recited these passages 
of past trouble. 

" True, true, true," said her companion, who 
had paused in her labor and watched her for a 
moment, " true, just as true as that Jacob — my 
Jacob, I used to call him, but now he's any- 
body's or nobody's — was carried off to prison 
by cruel men, ten times fiercer than your Gulf 
streams and your tornadoes — had his limbs 
chained, and was put to hewing great blocks of 
stone like a devil on penance — taken away 
from good day wages and bound in a jail — " 

" Peace ! you foolish women !" exclaimed 
Hobbleshank, starting up at this moment from 
the deep silence in which he had been buried, 
turning toward them and lifting both his arms 
tremblingly up, " I can read you a page, a black 
page out of the book of lamentations — that 
should make the blood creep in your old veins 
like the brook-ripples in December. There's a 
quiet, serene farm-house — a quiet, serene farm- 
house — with a father, a mother, yes, merciful 
God ! a young, happy, beautiful mother." He 



paused and bowed his head, but in a few min- 
utes he proceeded, " and a young child that has 
just crept out upon the bleak common of this 
world of ours, lying in her bosom, as it might 
be Adam and his spouse, in some chosen corner 
of their old garden. Some devil or other secret- 
ly ingulfs all the fortune of that household, tor- 
tures with a slow, killing pain, the father of 
the family, by ever lending to him and ever 
driving him for horrid interest — making him 
toil and moil in that great inexorable mill of 
usury and borrowing till his brain turns — his 
old reason totters like a weak tower that shakes 
in the wind. He flies from his home, wander- 
ing to and fro, he knows not whither — straying 
back to it at times, after long lunatic absences ; 
and one day — there's a word that should prick 
your foolish old hearts like a sword's point — 
coming suddenly back, he finds his fair young 
wife dead ! — yes, dead ! starved into a skeleton 
so pale and ghastly, that anatomists and men of 
death would smile to look on it — and the boy, the 
boy that should have gone with her, she loved 
him so, into the grave she had travelled to 
through hunger, or have stayed back to inherit 
that roof that was his and cheer up this sad old 
heart that is mine — snatched away, secretly, 
nobody could tell how, or when, or whither — 
and the very nurse that should have tarried to 
keep company with death in that house of sor- 
row — was likewise fled ; and I, an old, shat- 
tered, uncertain, poor creature, left alone in 
the midst of all this desolation — as if it became 
me — and had only waited for me as its rightful 
master and emperor. Well, God's blessing 
with you — and if you have seen greater trouble 
than that, you have borne it merrily and are 
miracles of old women to have lived through it 
to this day !" 

Saying this, the old man started up from his 
chair, and staggering across the room, trem- 
bling in every limb, he hurried into a small 
chamber at the end of the apartment and cast 
himself upon his couch. The two old women, 
abashed by the passion and energy of the speak- 
er, were silent for a while and moved not a 
limb. They both sat looking toward the door 
where Hobbleshank had entered, as if they ex- 
pected him momently to emerge. 

" A sad tale ; a sad tale, in truth ;" at length 
said the younger. " Was the boy never heard 
of?" 

" Never, that I know, from that dark day to 
this," answered the other mumbling as she 
spake and shrinking back into the chimney, as 
if what she recalled stood shrouded before her 
in a deadly form ; " search was not made for 
him until years after the mother's death ; the 
worms' banquet had been set and cleared away 
many a day, when the old man who had wan- 
dered away as soon as the funeral was over, the 
Lord knows whither, came back and loitered 
and lingered about his former residence, the old 
farm-house in the suburbs of the city, day after 
day, watching in vain, hour by hour, for the 
forthcoming of some one who could tell the his- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



201 



tory of what was past. The building is closed 
and deserted, and has no historian but itself, or 
such as would not tell, if they could, the fate 
of the lost child, or the secret of his death if 
dead he be." 

"And where is the nurse ?" 

" Absent, missing, drowned, or murdered, or 
dead in due course of nature ; nobody can tell. 
The house is deserted and gone to decay and is 
said to belong to a wretched miser, whose right 
came, somehow or other, through the child's 
death. There's the whole story, and this old 
man who came to live with me so long ago — 
even before you knew me — and has never once 
spoken of it till this night, is the only wreck of 
the troubles, and cares, and crosses, that howl- 
ed about it till they found entrance twenty years 
ago. Something has stirred him strangely or 
he would not have spoken this night." 

" Perhaps his mind is failing," said the other, 
" for when that's ebbing away it always un- 
covers what is at the bottom, and brings to light 
things hidden in its depths for years." 

" He may have seen some object associated 
with old times that has touched him/' answered 
Aunt Gatty, " visited, perhaps, the farm-house 
itself; or hare chanced upon some person con- 
nected with these terrible events." 

" It may be so. But let us to bed, my dear 
old friend, and pray that the Spirit of Peace be 
in the old man's slumbers." 

" Amen !" said her companion ; and, ex- 
tinguishing their light, and carefully drawing a 
curtain before the chamber-window where 
Hobbleshank lodged, that the morning beam 
might not disturb his repose, they were soon 
sheltered in the quiet and darkness of night that 
wrapped them all about. 

Ishmael Small, who had greedily watched 
them all through, after stretching his blank 
features forward into the gloom of the apart- 
ment to catch any further word that might 
chance to fall, crept down from his post of ob- 
servation and stole cautiously away. 



CHAPTER XI. 

MR. LEYCRAFT RAMBLES PLEASANTLY ABOUT. 

By the time Ishmael Small had returned to 
the street darkness had set in, and was growing 
along all the thoroughfares into the wide- 
bodied mantle worn by so many stragglers and 
evil-minded persons, and supposed to be a com- 
modious cloak for all sorts of villanies and 
misdemeanors. As Ishmael came into the open 
way, his eye fell upon a tall, gaunt figure, that 
kept before him, not altogether in a straight 
line, but winding about through the crowd of 
laborers and 'prentices that began to set up 
Chatham street at this hour, in a strong cur- 
rent ; not lialting at any time, exactly, but paus- 
ing every now and then in its progress, and 
glancing about into the faces of those it en- 



countered. Mr. Small observed that the tall 
figure occupied itself exclusively in gazing into 
men's faces, and into none of these save such 
as seemed to be in the early prime of life. The 
figure would look about and contemplate a face 
in this way for a moment, and then disengaging 
itself from the crowd, as if thwarted in its pur- 
pose, would hurry forward, until it plunged 
again into another, and renewed the never-end- 
ing scrutiny. 

On the traces of this personage Ishmael 
hung, until they reached Doyer street, and into 
this crooked by-way it hastened, first casting a 
swift glance back upon the throng that speed- 
ed by, and Ishmael Small followed. 

The tall figure glided stealthily along close 
up by the house-walls, and peered in wherever 
he could at the casements, coming at times to 
a dead pause, putting his face against the win- 
dow and looking long and painfully within, as 
if he were bound to have an inventory of every 
article in the apartment. 

In this way he toiled through the street, until 
he had reached its farthest extremity, where he 
crossed, entered a covered stable-way, and took 
up his station against the wall, his eyes still 
gleaming restlessly about, and his body bent 
forward into the partial darkness to catch sight 
of any face that chanced to pass. 

" Evening, Emp'ror," said Ishmael Small, 
crossing over at this juncture, and approaching 
him — lifting his cap at the same time with an 
air if profound respect — " taking the census, 
eh?" 

" I wish I was," said the other, sternly, pluck- 
ing his hat over his brow, " I'd have a chance 
then of learning whether he lives among men 
yet." 

"You have the queerest fancy for faces I 
ever did see, Mr. Leycraft," said Ishmael, turn- 
ing his own delightful countenance comically 
up toward Leycraft's, " the very funniest taste 
for juvenile noses that was ever heard of. 
Nothing'll serve you but a first-swath mug, 
about twenty-three year old, with a small 
blackberry mole under the left eye. Is that it ?" 
" That describes the child that was put foully 
out of the way," answered Leycraft, " so long 
ago, that it seems as if all had passed in an- 
other world, and yet as fresh, by Heaven, as if 
it belonged to yesterday." 

" There's a plenty of boys in this street," 
answered Ishmael, " and in the next, and the 
next to that, thad 'ud answer, Emp'ror ; you 
can have your pick, perhaps you won't get the 
black-berry under the eye, but then you can get 
lots of hair-lips and boar-teeth, burnt faces and 
scald heads, and what do you say to a lad with 
a portmantle on his shoulders, like Ishmael 
Small, for example." 

" Do you think Fyler Close lias any clew to 
the boy, dead or alive ?" asked Leycraft, paying 
no heed to the suggestion of Ishmael. 

"Lord! He know anything of (lie aeaple- 
grace," exclaimed Mr. Small, turning about so 
that the light of a stable lamp that hung above 



202 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



them should fall directly on his blank visage, 
" bless you, Mr. Leycraft, he's ignorant as the 
Mogul — the great grand Eastern Mogul, that 
takes tea with the moon. He knows nothing, 
nor cares nothing !" 

Mr. Leycraft grasped the seat with both 
hands, and bending down, looked sternly into 
the countenance of his companion, but discover- 
ing there nothing to the purpose, soon returned 
to his former position, and standing almost 
bolt upright, gazed straight forward, as if he 
would pierce the utmost limits of the darkness 
with his glance. 

" Pd give my soul if the boy were alive !" 
he at length exclaimed with startling energy, 
reining in his breath as he spake, and dis- 
charging each word with the force of a missile ; 
" alive ! Ragged though he might be, maimed, 
blind, in prison, the commonest vagabond, or 
vilest felon that stalks a prison-hall ; yea, 
though he stood before me now and with his 
raised hand should strike me to the earth, I'd 
leap up to greet him, and would bid him wel- 
come back to God's light, readier than his 
mother's lips hailed his first coming into life !" 
" Why don't you go to bed and sleep off this 
nonsense ?" inquired Mr. Small ; " the youth's 
abed somewhere or other, I'll warrant ; if not 
in a four-poster, may be in a church-yard crib. 
Sleep's the physic for your excellency." 

" Curse it ! I can't sleep," rejoined Leycraft, 
" I have put myself on board sloops and dirty 
coal-smacks, and toiled away at the ropes till 
my palms were blistered; have let myself to 
carry logs and great iron sticks of timber, by 
the day, and yet, when night came — night that's 
nothing but a hideous dream to men like me — 
I've laid down and shut my eyes, and just as 
slumber began to come pleasantly upon me, a 
hand, a small hand seemingly, but as strong as 
a giant's would be laid on my arm, would shake 
me, and rousing, I beheld that accursed child's 
eyes looking steadily in mine, broad awake and 
glittering, but not half so cheerful as broad 
day ; and then shaking his head mournfully, for 
a minute or two, it would move away, leaving 
me gasping and struggling for breath on the 
hard couch, like a drowning man. Blast my 
face, I'm but a dead-alive after all; pleasant 
company this, every night, but a little too much 
of it !" 

While Leycraft ejaculated this passage in an 
under-breath, Mr. Small stood aside and grin- 
ned cheerfully, as if at an imaginary spectacle 
of a very pleasant nature, which might be 
going on at a short distance before him ; at one 
minute he leaned forward with an ideal opera- 
glass at his eye; then he clapped his hands 
gently, as if the sport were well-conducted, and 
then he fell back, as against a comfortable sup- 
port, and laughed as if it were too much for 
him. All this he did as if entirely unconscious 
of the presence of Mr. Leycraft or any one 
whatever. 

" Blast you !" cried Leycraft, fixing his eye 
sharply uponlshmael, " You don't make a mock 
of me, do you, young radish-legs ? eh !" 



"Lord bless your excellency!" rejoined Mr. 
Small, waking, as by surprise, from an agree- 
able revery, " you can't seriously mean such a 
thing. I was thinking just then of a combat I 
had seed once at the thea-ter betwixt a fine 
speckled India tiger, and a little pock-marked 
man in a military jacket. The brute-beast was 
too much for him I guess," continued Ishmael, 
smiling pleasantly directly in Mr. Leycraft's 
face ; " the way he got the fangs first here and 
then there, now in the head, now in the bosom, 
was very agreeable to a young operative sur- 
geon what was aside o' me in the pit, very 
agreeable I can assure you." 

" In God's name, Ishmael," said Leycraft, his 
mood changing abruptly from that of extreme 
fierceness to one of earnest entreaty, " Tell me 
what you know of this matter ! If the child be 
dead, let me go and gather up his bones and 
give them decent burial at least !" 

" Suppose the lad died where you think he 
did, Emp'ror," said Ishmael, evading a direct 
answer, " it was a natural death without drugs 
or doctors, that's a comfort I'm sure." 

' A natural death, do you call it !" cried 
Leycraft, " the death of a pilfering weasel or 
a foul mud-rat rather. There's a plenty of na- 
ture in great black woods that swarm with 
bats and hideous birds of darkness, where no 
step comes but that of villains fled from city 
justice, and where the earth is dank with slime 
and sluggish ooze. A cradle and a calm pillow, 
with a face or two to look in upon it when one 
dies, is rather nearer the mark !" 

"And it's a very pleasant subject to talk of 
too," said Ishmael. " There's no place like a 
open stable-way for an agreeable interview, 
unless it's in the jail entry. * Mr. Leycraft's 
case is a very bad one,' says the keeper with 
his twist in his mouth. ' Not so bad, after all,' 
says the keeper's man, knocking the bunch o' 
keys agin his leg. c It was only a juvenile 
boy.' " 

" Blast you again !" exclaimed Leycraft, 
seizing Ishmael this time by the collar, and 
holding him in a hard gripe, " do you mock me 
for journey-work I've done for that old devil," 
pointing toward the lodgings of Mr. Fyler 
Close, " do you tell me I may come to hang for 
the job ! There'll be three pairs on the tree 
my brave fellow, the day John Leycraft swings ; 
three ripe villains and you'll be the youngest, 
and that old chap who begins to smell over-ripe, 
shall have the middle place, out of respect to 
his talents !" 

Ishmael again protested that he was friendly, 
and that he was only striving with his little 
wit to help Mr. Leycraft realize a pleasant 
scene that he might one day come to be a party 
to ; to which explanation Mr. Leycraft would, 
however, by no means hearken, but dragging 
Ishmael forth by the collar into the street, he 
pushed him from him with great vehemence, 
and while Mr. Small reeled off laughing to 
himself as he staggered, Leycraft turned his 
back upon him and hastened away. 
At first he hurried forward with his head 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



203 



down and his hands clenched like one bound on 
a task that must be performed, but presently, 
as he got into the throng of a thoroughfare, 
another purpose seemed to enter his mind, and 
raising his eyes suddenly he began to peer about 
like one wakened from a dream. Then he 
watched every face that passed him ; sometimes 
singled out one from all others, and followed it 
for a while until it crossed a light, and then he 
fell back as if he had made a fatal mistake ; 
and then taking up another, and another, and 
another, he renewed the pursuit, and again fell 
off into a state of blank despair. At times, 
too, he would strike from the crowd into by- 
streets, lone and deserted, where no soul was 
to be seen, and^walking here for awhile, cast 
his thoughts back upon what had passed — would 
to God there were no such past time — years and 
years ago. 

" I remember well," he said to himself in 
one of these pauses " how the old devil brought 
the work about ; ' Leycraft,' said he, with a 
very pleasant and cheerful smile on his counte- 
nance, ' there's a sweet child, it's young, quite 
young, that's never been in that piece of wood- 
land,' pointing to the hemlocks to the north- 
west, < in its life, near as it is. Now it's quite 
a warm evening and the wood will be much 
cooler than the close room ; the mother's dying 
within there — she can't last above a couple of 
hours — not beyond day-break at the best, and 
I'm quite curious, as she must go to heaven, 
for she's a delightful woman as ever was made, 
I'm quite curious to see which'll get there first, 
the mother postmarked by the doctors, or the 
young lad franked by the night air. It's a very 
curious little problem, isn't it ?' I of course, 
fool, double-woven, three-ply ass that I was — 
answered to his wish, and when night fell, 
having the very sighs and moans of the poor 
dying lady in my ear, bore the child away. An 
apoplexy the first step I had taken would have 
been Heaven's blessing on the job." 

At that moment a sick man was borne by in 
a curtained litter. Leycraft heard a groan, as 
of severe suffering and anguish from within ; 
and this goaded his restless and uncomfortable 
thoughts anew. 

"He, the generous, noble-hearted gentle- 
man that he is, allowed me a lodging in the gar- 
ret as long as I chose," said he, or rather, re- 
cited to himself, as he formed the thought in 
his own mind — " I might as well have lodged in 
the oven of eternal flame; the whole house 
cried out, from peak to foundation, against the 
deed I had done. The first night — good Heav- 
en — can I ever forget it ? — I slept well for a 
few hours, the agony of doing the crime had 
exhausted me ; but when I awoke, it was from 
a dreadful, dreary fantasm, made up of howling 
crowds in pursuit, dark, chill woods, and a 
whole army, it seemed, of innocent children, 
surrounding and pleading with me, or cursing, 
I don't know which. Before me — in a gloomy 
corner of the garret — I saw, where the moon- 
beam fell upon it through a rent in the roof 



and dressed it in ghastly light, the very child I 
had slain. It stood like a spectre, stiff, cold, 
threatening and rebuking me with its snake's 
eyes and visage of churchyard-marble. At first 
I was smitten aghast — but soon the devil 
stirred within me, and, rushing from my bed, 
I seized upon an old revolutionary sword — one 
that had been dyed long ago in a black Hes- 
sian's blood, and stood at the bed-head — and 
advancing upon the apparition, struck at it. It 
moved not ; I struck again and again — it was 
still dumb. In this way I wrestled with it, 
grasping my sword fast with a death-hold, all 
night, at least, till I fell down where I had 
fought, like one in a swoon. When morning 
dawned I turned my eyes fearfully toward the 
quarter of my adversary, and then discovered 
that I had been battling all night long with 
nothing but the picture of a little old man — in 
all seeming an ancestor of the murdered child — 
and that I had pierced it at a hundred points. 
A hideous night — God, thanks be to him, sends 
few such to men !" 

Whenever his thoughts ceased to toil with 
visions like these, he renewed his inquisition 
among the crowds through which he was pass- 
ing, or which he hurried on to meet. In this 
way he struggled with himself or speeded for- 
ward the better part of the night. Toward day, 
when one might have supposed he would have 
sought home and rest, wriggling his way 
through lanes and crooked streets that plunged 
down into the heart of the city, he entered an 
alley of tenpin-players, and casting aside his 
coat without a word, joined a grim-looking man 
who had amused himself with tossing the 
balls, one over the other, against flies upon the! 
ceiling, till Leycraft came in. They rolled 
away for hours ; bowling at the pins as if they 
had been men, and knocking six at least in 
head at each stroke. 



CHAPTER XII. 

A FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE WITH FOB, THE 
TAILOR. 

It was in the peak of the Font, even higher 
up than Puffer Hopkins, that Fob, the tailor, 
lodged, and there Puffer, ascending by ladder- 
steps, one pleasant morning about this time, 
found him nestling, like a barn-swallow, under 
the eaves, with his legs gathered under him, 
after the immemorial fashion of the craft. 

The room which was occupied by Fob, was 
scarcely more than an angle in the roof; the 
ceiling was formed by the slope of the housetop, 
and it was lighted by a small doi mer window 
which bulged out of the roof like an eye, and, 
being the only dormer in the neighborhood, 
stared boldly down into the yards and alleys 
adjacent. It enjoyed the further privilege, from 
its great elevation, of peering nil' beyond the 
river, into a pleasant country prospect in the 



204 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



suburbs of Williamsburgh, and furnished many 
cheerful rural images to any one that looked 
forth. Besides this paramount advantage of 
the dormer, there was within the apartment 
a pair of glass bottles on a small mantel, gar- 
nished with sprigs of asparagus stuck in at the 
top; a chain of birds'-eggs hung against the 
i wall over the shelf; an old-fashioned clothes- 
press, very much broken up and debilitated, at 
* the foot of a dwarf truckle-bed ; parts of old 
spinning-wheels, rusty stirrups and sur-cingles, 
the back of a mouldy and moth-eaten saddle, 
and other ancient trumpery in a corner, and 
suspended at the window, overlooking a pot of 
plants, a cage with a blackbird in it, busily en- 
gaged in passing up and down from a second- 
story perch to the ground-floor of his tenement. 

Although Puffer had many times before vis- 
ited the lodgings of the little tailor, he had 
not failed each time to express, by his manner 
at least, a degree of surprise and bewilderment 
at the peculiar appointments and furniture of 
the apartment. To come up out of the noisy 
and brawling street, where everything was so 
harsh and city-like, into a little region where 
everything was quietly contrived to call up re- 
mote places, with the thought of a life so dif- 
ferent, so simple, and pastoral, compared with 
the dull tumult below, was like magic, or play- 
house jugglery ; and such a feeling betrayed it- 
self in the countenance of Puffer Hopkins. 

" You wonder, I doubt not, to see this black- 
bird here — don't you ?" said the tailor, detect- 
ing the question which Puffer's looks had often 
asked before ; " what business have I with a 
blackbird, unless I might fancy that I could 
catch the cut of a parson's coat from the fash- 
ion of his deep sable feathers. That blackbird, 
sir, is to me and my opinions, what the best 
and portliest member of Congress is to the mind 
of this metropolis. He has come a great way 
out of the country, from the very fields where I 
was born, and where my childhood frolicked, 
to remind me of the happy hours I have passed 
and the sweet dreams I have dreamt, in the 
very meadows where he and his brethren chat- 
tered on the dry branches of the chestnut-tree. 
He stands to me for those fields and all those 
hours and occasions of the past. I am a fool 
for being so easily purchased to pleasure, and 
so lam!'' 

Puffer had indicated by the attentive ear and 
glistening eyes with which he had regarded 
his poor neighbor, that, although a politician 
and a crowd-hunter, he had yet something in 
his heart that answered these conceits of the 
fancy-stricken tailor. 

" This pot, too, of worthless flowers," con- 
tinued Fob, " my neighbors, every morning 
and evening, see me water them, and wonder 
how I can so waste my time. They see in it 
nothing but a few coarse weeds in a cheap 
earthen pot. I, and thank God for it, recognise 
in it the great green wood, where summer and 
I haunted when we we're young together. I 
hear in every breath that stirs them, the rust- 



I tling of the noonday-wind, as it spake to me long 
ago, in a quiet nook of the old ancestral wood- 
side ; and the pattering of the rain on their leaves 
renews the sound of that ancient brook, whose 
voice was like a prophet's, to cheer and encour- 
age all that green region in its growth. From its 
banks these flowers were plucked and brought 
into this heart of humanity, to give me a thought 
at times of the good childhood that was buried 
by me long ago where they had their birth." 

Puffer still listened and said not a word. 

" Oh, how many delicious discoveries in the 
tall grass ; how many stealthy approaches ; 
how many swayings in perilous branches, and 
mad antics in tree-tops ; how many boisterous 
pursuits of the young bird and^ lucky arrests of 
winged fugitives, resound and come back and 
repeat themselves in this speckled string of 
birds' eggs hanging against the dingy wall !" 

As he spake, the large black eyes of the tai- 
lor grew more lustrous, and still the more from 
the tears which stole out and back again with 
the emotions that stirred him. 

Fob had scarcely finished his earnest decla- 
mation, when they heard creaking steps upon 
the stair, and in a minute or two, while they 
listened, the door was thrust open, and a per- 
son of no little consequence, if his own counte- 
nance was to be taken as a commentary on his 
pretensions, came forward. He was a fine, 
sleek, well-fed gentleman, of a good middle 
stature, apparelled as daintily and cleanly as 
one could wish; and judging by his jet-black 
hair and whiskers, which shone again with oil 
or some other ointment ; his shapely and well- 
cut coat, which sat to his back like a supple- 
mentary skin ; his pantaloons, so straight and 
trim that the legs must needs move rectilinearly 
or not at all ; his hat, with its smooth, glossy nap ; 
his boots, quite as polished and serenely bright ; 
and the massy gold chain that stretched like an 
arc of promise over the azure heaven of a deep- 
blue vest : judging, we say, by all these, this 
personage must have been the first favorite of 
all the guilds and craftsmen, whose business it 
is to prepare a gentleman for a promenade. 

" Are those pants finished, Fob, I mean the 
superior with open fronts and patent straps ?" 
said the sleek visiter, swelling as he spake and 
staring over the little tailor's head very fiercely, 
as if he meditated boring a couple of holes in 
the wall beyond with his glances. " Curse it, 
sir, my boy sat up in the ware-house till 
midnight expecting you every moment. What 
do you think I'm made of," he continued, dash- 
ing his elegant heel on the floor, " cast-iron or 
New Hampshire granite ? Eh ?" 

" I worked, sir," answered Fob, looking up 
timidly into the face of the sleek gentleman, 
" till my needle grew so fine I couldn't see it ; 
and by the time I got down the right leg, the 
moon was set ; my candles all burnt out, and I 
fell back on my lapboard, sir, and slept till 
dawn, when I took up my last stitch with the 
rise of the sun. You shall have them by three 
this afternoon, if you'll be good enough to wait." 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



205 



" Rot your slow fingers, do you call that 
work ?" pursued the visiter. " Get in a new 
supply of lights, and keep it up all night — your 
wages would bear it. Here am I, paying you 
at the extravagant rate of ninepence an hour 
for your labor, and you grumble — do you ?" 

" I do not, sir," said Fob, meekly, " I am 
satisfied, perfectly satisfied. I'm bound to 
make clothes for gentlemen, and it pleases me 
to see gentlemen wear them, if they suit." 

"Do you know, Fob, that it's my private 
opinion," continued the sleek visiter, "my pri- 
vate opinion, if you had fallen a corpse on that 
board, and had never got up again — it would 
have done you great honor ?" 

Fob assumed a puzzled look at this, as if he 
didn't exactly fathom and comprehend how that 
could be. 

" I should like to know," resumed the well- 
apparelled visiter, " whether it isn't as credit- 
able to a man to lose his life on a pair of pa- 
tent-strapped, open-fronted pantaloons, as in a 
ditch, with a ball in his head, or a great bag- 
net in his belly — tell me that, will you ? If 
some man, you, for instance, would only make 
a martyr of himself in getting up a new-fangled 
coat, or a vest extraordinary, the craft of cloth- 
iers would make a saint of him. Overwork 
yourself, Fob, and be found by a coroner's 'quest 
stone-dead, with the pattern griped in your 
hand, and I'll bury you at my own expense ! 
'Gad I will — and that as soon as you choose !" 

To this pleasant proposition Fob made no an- 
swer, but smiled doubtfully and glanced up at 
his bird in the cage, thinking, perhaps, he'd 
rather be black and idle, and in prison like him, 
than a feeble-bodied tailor, working for journey- 
man's wages, with a delightful circle of calling 
acquaintance, like the gentleman there present, 
among Broadway masters and down-town cloth- 
ing-merchants. 

"Never mind that now," said the master, 
" you may think of it. Don't fail to run down 
at three, with the pants on your arm — mark 
me, now, Fob ;" and he shook his finger as he 
turned for the door. " I've got a wedding-coat 
to give out to you, to be ready for Monday 
evening, so there may be a little light Sunday- 
work for you. You needn't put any button- 
holes in the coat-tails, as you did once before, 
if you please. The blunder didn't take with 
the fashionables, although it was quite original 
and fresh. Down by three or I cut you oil* 
from our shop !" 

With this solemn admonition and menace, 
the high and mighty master tailor from Broad- 
way descended the narrow steps with great 
caution ; and getting once again into the free 
and open street, and on a good level pavement, 
launched out into some of his finest paces, at 
which he was soon so well pleased as to begin 
smiling to himself, and kept on in both i 
tions, smiling and launching out, till he reached 
his shop-door, where he entered majestically in. 

After the Broadway master had departed, 
Fob laid aside his implements and the garment J 



he was busy on, and getting down from his lap- 
board, walked to the window, where he stood ga- 
zing earnestly out, beyond the river, for several 
minutes. 

" I am sometimes surprised," he at length 
said, returning, and taking a seat on the cor- 
ner of his board, while a little globule, tha 
wonderfully resembled a tear, stood in the cor- 
ner of his eye, "I am sometimes surprised/ 5 
said he, " at the passionate fondness with which 
my mind dwells on the country. But it has 
always been so. W T hen I was a mere child, and 
my father lived then in the city, how- 1 used to 
yearn after a sight of the green fields. I 
watched the months as they waned away, with 
one hope, and that was, that August would 
soon be here and take me with its holyday coach 
away to the dusty turnpike, the long green lane, 
and the low roof of the homestead. At school I 
bent over my desk, and folding my hands upon 
my eyes, to help the labor of fancy, would strive 
with all my might to call up vividly some little 
scene or spot that I loved or preferred to others. 
When the world was rough with me, even at 
that early time, I would hie away in thought to 
the side of a shady pool that I knew of, and 
quench my thirst and drown my troubles in wa- 
ters purer and more limpid, as it seemed to 
me, than any other that ever flowed or bub- 
bled up from the earth." 

In explanation of the character of his poor 
neighbor, Puffer afterward learned, that the 
homestead of Fob's ancestors, for, poor and 
wretched as he now seemed, the fanciful tailor 
once had ancestors — the homestead which Fob 
loved next after his own soul, every rood of 
which was fairy ground to his memory, peopled 
with lovely shapes, having power to stir the 
fountain of tears, every nook and angle asso- 
ciated in his fancy with precious hours long 
passed away; that this dear homestead had 
been wrested out of the hands of its rightful 
heritors, and was, by law and custom, a for- 
bidden realm to him. In spite of this, it was 
Fob's wont to visit it secretly every year, at 
midsummer, to wander silently about its familiar 
fields and dusky woods, and returning when he 
had gathered a store of pleasant thoughts and 
fancies to last him a twelvemonth, to bring back 
such memorials and relics — like those which gar- 
nished his garret — as would suggest to his 
mind the kindliest recollections of his favorite 
haunts. 

"Among many images which perpetually 
come into my mind associated with that old 
past time," resumed the little tailor, after a 
pause, " there is one more distinct, more fixed 
and impressive than any other. I know not 
why, nor do I know how it should occur to me 
so forcibly now that you are here. There was 
a stiange old man, who many years ago was a 
wanderer along the Scarcsdale road) they said 
he had spent his school-holydays somewhere 
there — I marked him and loved him lor that — 
and whose wild actions were a constant theme 
at half the country firesides. I saw him once 



206 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



—at midnight, or very near that time— upon 
the shore of the Sound, where I had been walk- 
ing up and down, for I chanced to be a sorrow- 
er myself. He had cast off his hat, and stood 
facing the water with his hair streaming wild- 
ly back, and his eyes gleaming forth upon the 
wave, with all the splendor of madness. He 
cried aloud as if in discourse with the billows. 
' Has't anything to lend to day ? I must have 
money — disgorge, or I shall starve — my wife is 
hungry — my boy cries for bread ! Foam will 
not feed him — nor will these loud-sounding 
rebuffs of yours ! Wave on wave — cent per 
cent — how they jump, and frolic, and climb 
each other at a compound pace. Oh, what a 
leger of interest must there be on the other 
shore, when we reach it ! God's there, keep- 
ing count — mark that !' 

The Sound was in a stormy state ; a ship 
was passing that wrestled fiercely with the bil- 
lows that tumbled against her sides and rushed 
in the way of her prow, and kept her in a per- 
plexing grasp, struggling in vain to get free. 
The old man caught sight of this, f Dash and 
howl and drag her down, will you V he shouted, 
' that's the true death-grapple, and, old ship, 
you must yield. See ! she shivers against a 
rock and down she pitches,' — at this the vessel 
struck a bulging crag, and was in a moment 
broken into a thousand fragments. < Pull her 
in pieces, joint by joint, and make shreds of 
her, as I do of this — yes, this cursed scroll that 
the old engulfing miser gapes for in the city ! 
So — so — thus !' Saying this he snatched from 
his breast what seemed a large square of 
parchment, and tearing it into tatters, scattered 
it with the wind, along the beach !" 

" What became of the fragments — were they 
never gathered ?" asked Puffer Hopkins. 

" They were — and by me," answered Fob. 

" And where are they now ?" 

" The Lord, that hath a record of all things 
lost, only knows !" he answered. " I collected 
them, patched them together, and after passing 
from hand to hand, without much advantage to 
any, they were thrown into some old trunk or 
garret, where, doubtless, they are mouldering 
now — and in all human chances, passing 
through the same process their once owner — 
that poor, wild, sorrow-stricken old man is un- 
dergoing in some almshouse burial-ground !" 

" Do you recollect nothing of the purport of 
this recovered paper ?" asked Puffer Hopkins. 

" Only this much," answered Fob, " that it 
was a conveyance of house and land, with the 
singular provision that no transfer or sale of 
the property could be good and sufficient while 
the child or son, I forget now his name, was 
living. The names, the dates, much more the 
boundaries, have all fled from my memory ; 
but I shall never forget the wild tones and 
eager looks of the old creature that made the 
deed into fragments ; whose voice seemed to 
echo the sea, and who borrowed from it the 
method of his acts !" 

It suddenly entered the mind of Puffer Hop- 



kins, whose attention had been strongly fast- 
ened upon the narrative of the little tailor, that 
the old man, that this sufferer, of so long since, 
and who was supposed by Fob to lie in his 
grave, might be none other than his kind and 
singular companion whom he had followed from 
the public hall. He was full of the thought, 
and, interchanging scarcely another word with 
the tailor, he left the garret, pondering on what 
he had heard, and striving to gather out of it 
something that might bear on what seemed the 
distracted fortunes of Hobbleshank. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ECONOMY OF MR. FYLER CLOSE AND 
ISHMAEL SMALL. 

Recovertng from the blow administered by 
Mr. Leycraft, Ishmael promptly regained his 
legs, and putting them into active service, he 
moved down with good speed — the night-air 
was sharp and pinching — upon a neighboring 
shop window, and, knocking up his cap-front, 
employed a minute or two in gazing through 
the pane, at what lay inside. 

" There's fine slices of liver in there," said 
Ishmael to himself, " and excellent chops, and 
all sorts of greens. A pound or two of chops 
would be very nice with carrots ; and so would 
a slab of liver. But I guess I'll take a small 
porter-house steak, without the bone, for this 
time only !" 

He accordingly proceeded to invest a small 
sum in the delicacy in question, skewered it, 
and concealing it in an ingenious brown paper 
hood, bore it exultingly away. 

" Something to wet the fibres, of course," he 
resumed, as he approached a grocer's, " some- 
thing to drown the young critturs in ; a pint 
of fresh cider from the Newark keg ; the very 
choicest squeezin's of a thousand pippins ! 
That'll do !" This beverage was procured, 
and, in a borrowed pitcher, was put in compa- 
ny with the steak ; and skipping along faster 
than ever, bounding nimbly over any obstacle 
that crossed him, he was in a very few minutes 
in the hall that passed the broker's door. Light- 
ly as he stepped along, the ear of the old man 
was too quick for him, and in answer to a sum- 
mons from within, he halted, placed his steak 
and pitcher privily on a chair in the corner of 
the hall, and turning a baker's measure that 
stood by over them, for a screen, entered. 

The lodgings of Mr. Close, were, as Ishmael 
now entered them, if anything, more desolate 
than ever. There was the dull, bare floor, the 
naked walls, the great cold chimney, breath- 
ing, instead of warmth and comfort, a dreary 
dullness through the room ; and the shivering 
broker seated by the hearth, as if he would coax 
himself into a belief that a cheery fire was 
crackling upon it. 

The only light the apartment was allowed, 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



207 



came in through the open windows in the rear, 
and was contributed by the various candles and 
lamps of the neighborhood. In this half-light- 
ed gloom, Mr. Small entered, removed his cap, 
and stood by the door. He was hailed at once, 
but in a very feeble voice, by Mr. Close. 

" Don't stand there, Ishmael, take a chair 
by the hearth ; it's much pleasanter than by 
the door." Ishmael came forward and did so. 

" Don't you perceive a difference ?" said Mr. 
Close, as soon as Ishmael was seated. " Don't 
you think of the many pleasant fires that have 
blazed on this very hearth, and doesn't that 
make you feel cheerful ?" 

Ishmael confessed that it was a comforting 
thought. 

" Yet pleasant as it is," pursued Mr. Fyler 
Close, " as this is a Thursday, I'd like to be 
out ; out in the open air, hurrying through the 
streets at my best pace. What do you think 
of that ?" 

"To class-meeting, of course," suggested 
Ishmael, with the faintest possible smile on his 
delightful features. 

"To be sure — but my age and infirmities, 
Ishmael, won't allow me, you know," answered 
Fyler, pleasantly, " to attend those delightful 
social and moral gatherings, as I'd liketo." 

" Certainly not," rejoined Mr. Small, grin- 
ning slightly. 

" Nor to be at missionary lectures, dropping 
in my little mite for the heathen," continued 
Fyler, " nor at the chapel, listening to the na- 
tive African giving an account of the vices and 
wild beasts that beset the aboriginal negro in 
that benighted country. What a loss to an 
evangelical mind !" 

" Dreadful, sir," answered Ishmael. " And 
there's the privilege of subscribing to a new 
cloak for the minister, and helping make up a 
box of trousers and clean linen for the Tus- 
caroras !" 

" Very true, Ishmael — very true ! I'm a mel- 
ancholy old fellow, doing nothing but sit here 
all day long — with people coming in and beg- 
ging me to take twenty per cent, interest, coax- 
ing me with tears in their eyes, to ruin 'em ; 
and when I have done it, coming back to break 
my furnitur' up like old crockery — just to get 
me into temper, and make me mar my Christian 
deportment. That's what I call ingratitude, 
Ishmael." 

" The very basest sort, sir," said Mr. Small, 
" caught in the wild state, caged, and marked 
on the peak of the den, * This here's the mon- 
ster !' " 

" Providence is a wonderful thing, Ishmael," 
continued Fyler Close. 

" Very much so," answered Mr. Small, lift- 
ing his knavish gray eyes to a great spider on 
the wall, sitting in the middle of his web, where 
the light of a bright lamp shone from without, 
in waiting for a gold-spotted (ly, caught by the 
legs in a mesh. 

" Now I suppose you followed old Hobble- 
shank providentially, down to his den — eh, Ish- 



mael ?" said Fyler, leering on Mr. Small. Ish- 
mael replied in the affirmative. 

" And no doubt you happened to put your 
head through the window and overhear what 
the old gentleman said. He wasn't very noisy, 
I hope." 

" Not more thanthe Hen and Chickens, in a 
storm!" answered Ishmael. "Why, sir, he 
made a speech that 'ud have done honor to 
a United States senator ; and the two old 
women whimpered like a couple of water- 
spouts. A delightful speech, sir, and all about 
that boy again." 

" Ha ! ha ! and didn't he tell 'em how like a 
father I had been to him ; and how I advised 
him not to bother his head about what was past 
and gone for good — and the old women, hadn't 
they something to say, too, Ishmael ?" 

" Not much ; the old story," answered Mr. 
Small, " about the old house, and the nurse, 
and all that sort o' thing." 

" All in the dark as much as ever ?" asked 
Fyler, pulling his whiskers with all his might, 
in order to throw an expression of great suf- 
fering into his countenance. 

" I guess so ; and old lunatic's wits are 
breaking under him, and won't carry him 
through the winter. That's better yet— don't 
you think it is ?" 

" Oh no, by no means," responded Mr. Close. 
" We should always hope for the best. It 
would be a very painful thing — a very painful 
thing, indeed, Ishmael, to have the worthy old 
gentleman go mad, out of mere ugliness and 
spite — because he can't find a boy that he 
thinks he's the father of. Don't you see that V* 

" Very melancholy indeed," said Ishmael, 
who began to think remorsefully of the neg- 
lected cheer in the hall, " so much so that I 
don't feel equal to a conversation on the sub- 
ject. Won't you be good enough to excuse 
me?" 

" Certainly — I have too much respect for 
your feelings. Go, by all means, Ishmael, and 
the sooner you're abed, reflecting on the wil- 
fulness of man, and the mysterious ways and 
goings-on of Providence, the better for you ! 
Good night ; you'll be in bed at once, I hope. 
Keep yourself nice and warm, Ishmael." 

" I'll try, sir," answered Mr. Small, artlessly, 
" although it's a piercer out o' doors," and 
partly aside, " what a precious old man — a per- 
fect martyr to his feelings." 

The door was closed ; the old man leapt up, 
and dancing about the room, running forward 
every now and then to the window and staring 
into the open casements that furnished the free 
light to his chamber, rubbed his hands together 
with very glee. 

Ishmael paused for a moment wilhout, to 
look through a private crevice in the wall and 
enjoy the spectacle ; then uncovered his steaks 
and pitcher, and taking them in his hand, bore 
them up stairs, and entered the apartment im- 
mediately over Mr, Close. This was srareely 
more than a loft at the very top of the house ; 



208 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



with beams and rafters cutting it crosswise and 
lengthwise in every direction; which beams 
were garnished with a great number of sus- 
pended market-baskets ; coils of ancient iron 
hoops ; great pieces of tarred cable ; and here 
and there, bunches of rusty keys of all possible 
sizes — some perfect giants, suited for great 
warehouses, and others scarcely large enough 
for ladies' writing-desks. The room, poor and 
parti-furnished as it was, had an air of com- 
fort, from the circumstance of the walls being 
lined on every side with coats, trowsers, vests, 
roundabouts, and cloaks, hung upon pins about, 
in great abundance and variety; and when 
Ishmael, stepping gently about the room, gath- 
ered together from corners and hiding-places, 
fragments of wood and shaving, heaped them 
in the chimney and lighted a fire that blazed 
and crackled up the flue, throwing out a wa- 
vering flame into the gloom of the apartment, 
it seemed as if the room swarmed with visiters, 
who stood shrouded in their various apparel 
against the wall, and only waited an invitation 
from Ishmael to come forward and make them- 
selves merry over his fire. 

When Ishmael saw how cheerily the fire 
sparkled on the heai - th, he could not hold from 
laughing gently, and thinking of the old gen- 
tleman below stairs. Then he took down from 
the wall an old rusted gridirion, planted it up- 
on the coals, and spreading his steak upon the 
bars, watched the process that followed with 
an eager eye. In a few minutes it was finished 
to a turn, and while a pleasant savor steamed 
up and filled the garret with a grateful smell, 
Ishmael arrayed his cheer on a blue plate on a 
little mantel or shelf that overhung the hearth ; 
placed a small loaf (a perquisite from the ba- 
ker) with a knife and fork at its side; and 
drawing a well-worn countinghouse-stool from 
a corner, vaulted upon it with an easy leap, 
and first perching his heels upon a round near 
the top, and placing the blue plate on his knee, 
entered with steady glee upon the business be- 
fore him. 

The meal was despatched, as all meals are 
that are relished hugely ; and when it was 
fairly at an end, Ishmael jumped up, and stand- 
ing for a minute on the very top of the stool, 
and raising his hand above him, he brought 
down from a beam a long clay pipe and a hand- 
ful cf well-dried tobacco ; bent down and light- 
ed it with a coal ; and, balancing his seat up- 
on its hind legs, fell back against the wall, and 
watched the smoke complacently, as it was lost 
among the rafters. 

All this process seemed to operate with a 
kindly influence on Mr. Small, and as, from 
time to time, he removed the pipe from his lips, 
he discovered that he was in a fine narrative 
humor, and having no one to talk to, was driv- 
en, from the sheer necessity of the case, to talk- 
ing to himself. 

" That's not so bad," said Ishmael, glancing 
about at the various distenanted garments that 



; filled the room, "fourpence a day for trowsers, 
and sixpence for the use o' respectable men's 
coats with skirts ; all for honest voters that 
goes to the polls in other people's clothes out 
i o' respect to their memory. Nick Finch is a 
capital 'lectioneerer, and dresses up his voters 
! as pretty and natural as any man ever did ; 
! but if Nick's friends only knew what dignified 
; gentleman had wore their coats and trowsers 
; before 'em, they'd carry their heads more like 
lords and commodores than franchise citizens. 
I Here's this nice suit of crow-black," pursued 
I Mr. Small, turning about and fixing his eye up- 
'' on the garments in question. There wasn't a 
' nicer parson in the whole hundred and forty 
pulpits, than that gentleman afore he took to 
I private drinks, and began to borry money of 
! Uncle Close on his gilt-edged prayer-books and 
I great bibles out o' the pulpit. He used to look 
J quite spruce and fine, I can tell you, when he 
1 first come here; then his beard began to stub- 
ble out ; then his boots was foxy ; and then 
he'd come with his hat knocked in, and his 
pockets full of small stones, which he tried to 
pass off on the old 'un for change. When he 
got to that Uncle Close had him took up by the 
police for a deranged wagrant ; and that was 
| the last of you, old fellow !" 

"Volunteer firemen is queer chaps!" con- 
tinued Ishmael, casting his eyes upon a shaggy 
white overcoat with enormous pearl buttons. 
" Bully Simmons was one of the primest, and 'ud 
play a whole orchestra on a fire-trumpet, on 
the way to a one-story conflagration. But fires 
was too much for him — they come on too thick 
and shiny on wet nights ! First, Bully lost his ap- 
petite, and then he sold out all his red shirts ; 
then he lost the use o' his legs, and couldn't 
travel a ladder, with a pipe in his hand ; and 
that made him part with his best figured hoists, 
every one of 'em ; and, one night, Bully tried 
his voice agin a nor'wester that was howling 
among the flames of a big factory, and when 
he found himself beaten out, he stood at the 
back of old Forty and shed tears into an engin'- 
bucket like rain ; stopped at the old gentle- 
man's on his way home, and sold out his fire-hat, 
his belts, his boots, and that great rough jack 
et, for a song ; borrowed a coal-heaver's shirt 
to go home in, and turned agin engines for life. 
Bully's a very moral man, they say, now, and 
takes in the tracts by handfuls every time they 
come round, for shavin' paper." 

As Ishmael sat perched upon his stool, fra- 
ming, in this way, a memoir of each boot, vest, 
and overcoat, or meditating the course of the 
next day's business, an humble tap was given at 
the door, the door slowly opened, and a for- 
lorn-looking personage, in a shabby hat, cov- 
ered with dust, as was also his whole person, 
from crown to boot, and having under his arm 
a small parcel, came in. Advancing timidly, 
removing his hat, and standing before Ishmael 
— while he looked piteously in his face, he ac- 
costed him. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



209 



" Please, sir," said the stranger, " is there 
no corner of a bed a poor traveller might have, 
with a morsel to keep down the famine of a 
long day's march V* 

To this appeal Mr. Small made no answer, 
but reclining against the wall, assumed to fall 
into a profound slumber. 

" Do, for Heaven's sake, hear me !" contin- 
ued the stranger. " Wake and hear me ! I have 
come from burying an only child in the country, 
and have neither crust nor couch to keep off 
the cold and hunger this night." 

" Hallo ! what's all this ?" cried Ishmael, 
feigning at that moment to waken from his 
sleep. " Who's here ? Thieves ! thieves ! Do 
you mean to murder us in cold blood ?" 

The poor stranger stood shivering before 
him, with his hat crushed in his hand. 

" There are no thieves here," said the stran- 
ger, as soon as he could be heard. " No man's 
life to be taken but mine, from sheer lack of 
food." 

" Oh, you're a beggar, are you ?" said Ish- 
mael, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. 
" Why didn't you stop below, at the old man's ? 
He would have helped you, I'm quite sure." 

" So he would — so he would, sir," said the 
traveller, " but he's poor too — poorer than I. 
His health was broken, he told me ; he's cut 
off from all his religious comforts, and sits 
watching there, in that cold room, the pleasure 
of Providence. He's a nice, a worthy old man ; 
that I judged by what he said. He referred 
me to you ; there was a benevolent young gen- 
tleman up stairs, he said, that would do any- 
thing I asked." 

" He did, eh ? And so you come to me," said 
Ishmael, smiling mildly upon the stranger. 
" Lodgin' in a garret and old clothes cem-e-te- 
ry ; as if I had a scrap to spare. You're a wag 
— I know you are ; but you shouldn't play off 
your humor on poor lads that lives in the roof. 
Oh, no — it won't do — and just, by way of apol- 
ogy for your rudeness, be good enough to give 
my compliments to the first watchman — you 
know what watchmans are, I guess — you meet 
at the door. Tell him to lend you his overcoat 
— he's sure to do it — borry his rattle for a cane 
— rattles make first-rate walking-sticks, and 
waddle home as fast as you can. Good night, 
turnip patch !" 

The poor stranger dropped his head, and, 
without murmur or answer, went away. 

Mr. Small now felt that he was wrought to 
as comfortable a state, intellectually and phys- 
ically, as was attainable by such a gentleman 
as himself, and turned his eye bedward. Cast- 
ing his coat off, and dexterously jerking a boot 
from either leg, as he stood, into a remote cor- 
ner, he pulled down from their pegs, every one 
of them, all the coats, vests, and other garments 
in the apartment, into a heap upon his truckle- 
bed, and creeping under the same, his knavish 
gray eyes, alone, peering out from under the 
mass, he fell into a tranquil sleep. 
O 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PUFFER HOPKINS ENCOUNTERS HOBBLESHANK 
AGAIN. 

There could be no doubt — apart from what 
had occurred to Mr. Small — that a general elec- 
tion was close at hand ; and that the city was 
rapidly falling into a relapse of its annual fe- 
ver. The walls and stable-doors broke out all 
over with great placards and huge blotches of 
declamation ; an erysipelas of liberty, temples, 
and muscular fists, clenched upon hammers, 
appeared upon the foreheads of the pumps ; the 
air swarmed, as with forerunners of a plague, 
with ominous flags, streaked from end to end 
with a red and white and spotted inflammation ; 
journeyman patriots and self-sacrificing office- 
seekers began to shout and vociferate as in a 
delirium; in a word, unless the customary 
blood-letting incident to a charter contest af- 
forded relief, the patient was in a fair way of 
going stark mad, and losing the humble share 
of sense with which it looks after its washing 
and ironing, and provides for its butcher's and 
baker's dues during the rest of the year. It 
could scarcely be expected that Puffer Hopkins 
should escape the general endemic ; on the 
contrary, it being his first season, the symp- 
toms were in him extremely violent, and furi- 
ous. From morning till night he sat at his 
desk like one spell-bound, fabricating resolu- 
tions, preambles, and reports of retiring com- 
mittees, by the gross ; or starting up every now 
and then and stalking the room vehemently, 
and then returning and committing the em- 
phatic thoughts that had occurred to him In 
his hurried travel, to the record before him ; 
varying this employment with speeches with- 
out number, delivered in all possible attitudes, 
to imaginary audiences of every temper, com- 
plexion, and constitution. 

Sometimes he had very distinctly before him, 
in his mind's eye, an assemblage where the 
carting interest prevailed, and where the re- 
duction of corporation cartmen's wages, for 
instance, might be undergoing an examina- 
tion. 

" Gentlemen," said Puffer to the prospective 
audience, " gentlemen, I put it to you whether 
twenty cents a load will pay a cartman and a 
cartman's horse ? Gentlemen, I see a prospect 
before me for any man that undertakes to work 
for such prices. In six months he is a pauper, 
his children's paupers, his horse's a pauper, 
and what's better, walks up and down the ave- 
nue, where he's turned out to die, like the ap- 
parition of a respectable dirtman's horse that 
had been; meeting the aldermen as they ride 
out in their jaunts, and rebuking 'em to the 
face for their niggardly parsimony. Hasn't 
a cartman, a dirt-cartinan, rights, I'd like to 
know ? Hasn't he a soul; and why should he 
submit to this inhuman system ; why should the 
sweat of the poor man's brow be wrung out to 



210 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



fertilize the soil of the rich man's field ?" (Im- 
aginary cheers, beginning in a gentle " G' up," 
and ending in an earthquake hurrah !) 

Then his audience consisted of a great num- 
ber of individuals, who, from their being clad 
in nice broadcloth coats, and always having 
their beards closely trimmed, are supposed to 
be gentlemen and Christians. 

" Fellow-citizens !" cried Mr. Hopkins, "we 
all see what they're driving at;" alluding to 
the other party, of course ; " they're at work 
undermining the pillars of society — that's Avhat 
they would have. Not a man of 'em but would 
plant a keg of powder under every pulpit, on 
Sunday morning, and blow all our respected 
clergy to heaven in a twinkling. They're in- 
fidels and agrarians, fellow-citizens, and when 
they'd done that, they'd let the pews out for 
apple-stands, and fall straightway to eating 
soup out of the contribution-plates. If you 
don't beat 'em at the next election, if you don't 
rouse yourselves in your strength and over- 
whelm these monsters and jacobins, I despair 
of my country — I despair of mankind; and 
you'll have a herd of vipers saddled on you 
next year for a corporation !" 

Abandoning this disagreeable region, Puffer 
relieved himself by the fiction of a room full of 
stout, rosy, comfortable-looking gentlemen, who 
groaned in spirit under a great burden of city 
charges, and whose constant saying it was, 
that they, figuratively only, were eaten up with 
taxes. 

"The city aldermen, the common council of 
this mighty metropolis," said Puffer, " is noth- 
ing but a corporation of boa-constrictors — a 
board of greedy anacondas — that swallow lot 
after lot, house upon house, of the freeholders, 
as if they were so many brick-and-mortar sand- 
wiches. Commissioners of street-opening run 
the plough through a man's sleeping-room of 
a morning before he's out of bed ; and clap a 
set of rollers under his dwelling and tumble it 
into the river, as if it were so much old lum- 
ber. Will you submit to this ? Never ! The 
spirits of your forefathers protest against it ; 
your posterity implore you to snatch their 
bread, their very subsistence from the maw of 
these gigantic wolves in pacific apparel ! The 
little children in their cradles raise their hands 
and ask you to save them from ruin !" 

It is impossible to conjecture to what regions 
of rhetoric and simile-land the imagination of 
Puffer Hopkins might have conveyed him, now 
that lie was fairly on the wing; for at this 
moment, and in the very midst of these pleas- 
ant fables and suppositions, Puffer received by 
the hand of a messenger, a notice from the chief 
or executive committee, directing him to pro- 
ceed forthwith to the house of Mr. Nicholas 
Finch, an electioneering agent, and secure his 
services. Now, Puffer had heard of Nick Finch, 
as he was familiarly entitled, before; believed 
him to be as thorough-going, limber tongued, 
and supple-jointed a fellow as could be found in 



the county; and therefore relished not a little the 
honor of effecting a negotiation for his distin- 
guished talent. Without delay he hurried forth, 
rousing by the way the messenger, who being 
a fellow besotted by drink and stupefied with 
much political talk, in taprooms and elsewhere, 
had halted in one of the landings, and there, 
retiring penitentially to a corner, had gone off* 
into a profound and melodious slumber. Per- 
forming this agreeable duty, and lending the 
gentleman an arm to the street, Puffer proceed- 
ed to the quarters where he understood Mr. 
Finch held his lair. He soon approached the 
precinct, but not knowing it by number, he put 
the question to one of a group of lads playing 
at toys against a fence side. A dozen started 
up at once to answer. 

" Nick Finch — Nick Finch, sir — over here, 
sir, this way, through the alley !" And word 
having passed along that a gentleman was in 
quest of Mr. Finch, Puffer was telegraphed 
along from window to window, area to area, 
until he was left at the foot of an alley, by an 
old woman who had gallopped at his side for 
several rods, who shouted in his ear, "Up 
there, sir, up there !" and hobbled away again. 
Left to himself, Puffer entered by a gate, and 
making cautious progress along a boarded lane, 
arrived in front of a row of common houses, 
to which access was obtained by aid of outside 
steps, fastened against the buildings. Ascend- 
ing the first that offered, he rapped inquiringly 
at the door, was hailed from within by a deci- 
sive voice, and marched in. The apartment 
he had invaded was an oblong room, with a 
sanded floor, a desk on a raised platform at the 
farthest extremity, a full length George Wash- 
ington in perfect white, standing in one cor- 
ner, and a full length Hamilton, bronzed, in 
the opposite. Against the wall, and over a 
fireplace in which a pile of wood was crack- 
ling and blazing, was fastened the declaration 
of Independence, with all those interesting 
specimens of handwriting of the fifty-two sign- 
ers, done in lithograph ; and across a single 
window that lighted the room, where he had 
entered, was stretched a half American flag, 
cut athwart, directly through all the stars, and 
suspended by a tape. 

The owner of the voice, a short, thick-set 
man, with a half-mown beard, a hard, firm 
countenance, and apparelled in a cart-frock, 
stood in the middle of the apartment ; and be- 
fore him, ranged on a bench, sat a dozen or so 
ill-dressed fellows, whose countenances were 
fixed steadily on his. 

" Come in, sir, come in," said the thick-set 
man. " Don't hesitate — these are only a few 
friends that are spending a little time with me ; 
paying me a sociable visit of a day or two, that's 
all." It occurred to Puffer that if these fel- 
lows were actually visiters of the gentleman in 
the cart-frock, that he had decidedly the most 
select circle of acquaintance of any one he 
could mention. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



211 



"I'm glad you've come, sir," continued the j 
electioneerer. " I've been expecting you some 
days." 

" Then you know me ?" said Puffer. 

" Of course I do," answered the other. "Al- 
low me to introduce you to my friends. Gen- 
tlemen " (turning to the line of ragged gentry on 
the bench), " Puffer Hopkins, Esq., of the Op- 
position committee. Rise, if you please, and 
give him a bow." 

The ragged gentry did as they were bid, and 
straightway sat down again, as if the unusual 
exertion of a salute had entirely exhausted 
them. 

" I am afraid I interrupt business," said 
Puffer. " You seemed engaged when I came 
in." 

" I was," answered the electioneerer, " and 
you entered just in the nick of time to aid me. 
You must act as an inspector of election ; you 
have a good person, a clear, full voice, and will 
judge my voters tenderly. Take this chair, if 
you please !" Saying this, he at once induct- 
ed Purler into a seat behind the desk on the 
raised platform, placed before him a green box, 
and proceeded to distribute among the gentle- 
men on the bench, a number of small papers 
curiously folded, which they received with a 
knowing smile. 

" Now, gentlemen, go up as I give the sig- 
nal," sakf Mr. Finch. « Mr. Peter Foil, will 
you have the goodness to deposite your ballot ?" 

At this one of the company who had found 
his way, by some mysterious dispensation, 
into a faded suit of black — it was the bro- 
ken-down parson's — but whose hair was, nev- 
ertheless, uncombed, and his hat in very re- 
duced circumstances, shambled across the floor 
and made a show of inserting a vote in the 
green box before Puffer Hopkins. 

" That will never do, sir," said the election- 
eerer, rather sternly, as he was crossing back 
again. " You shuffled up to the counter as if 
you were shoaling through the market, accord- 
ing to your well-known habits, stealing pigs' 
feet of the butchers to make broth of; and when 
you attempted lo give the inspector your ticket, 
any one could have sworn you had been a fish- 
vender's secretary, thrusting your hand in a 
basket to pull out a flounder or a bunch of eels ; 
try it again !" 

Mr. Foil renewed the attempt — this time, 
with greater success. 

" That's better," said Mr. Finch, encour- 
agingly, "worthier the respectable man whose 
clothes you've got on ; more of the air of a civ- 
ilized being. Now, Mr. Runlet." 

At this a heavy-built personage proceeded 
to perform his duty as a franchise citizen, but 
in so cumbrous a gait and with so weak an eye 
to the keeping and symmetry of his part, as to 
call down a severe rebuke from Mr. Finch. 

" You pitch about as if you were on your 
own ploughed land at Croton, and not down 
here, earning handsome wages on the pave- 
ment for doing freeman's service. You must 



walk more level, and not up and down like 
a scart buffalo. Carry your arms at your 
side, and don't swing them akimbo, like a 
pair of crooked scythe-sneaths. You'll do bet- 
ter with your dinner to steady you !" 

After Mr. Runlet, a third was summoned, 
who wore the garments of the volunteer fire- 
man ; but was condemned as failing most la- 
mentably in his swagger, and missing to speak 
out of a cornei 1 of his mouth, as if he carried a 
segar in the other. After several trials he 
amended his performance, and succeded at last 
in bullying the inspector with a grace, and get- 
ing his vote in by sheer force of impudence. 

Another was called, who, springing up with 
great alacrity, endued, in a pair of stout cordu- 
roys, with a shirt of red flannel, rolled back 
upon his arms over one of white, a great 
brawny fellow, pitched about from one quarter 
of the room to another, putting it into imagi- 
nary antagonists with all his might; at one 
time knocking one on the head with his broad 
hand, then teasing another's shins with a side- 
way motion of the leg, and discomfiting a third 
with a recoil of a bony elbow, to the unquali- 
fied satisfaction and delight of Mr. Finch and 
all lookers-on, and then retiring to his seat, ap- 
parently exhausted and worn out with his sav- 
age sport. 

About half the company had been drilled and 
exercised in this manner, when a door was sud- 
denly thrown open at the lower end of the 
apartment, a shrewish face thrust in, and a shrill 
voice appertaining thereto called out that din- 
ner was ready, and had better be eaten while 
it was hot. Puffer Hopkins caught sight of a 
table, spread in a room that was entered by a 
descending step or two. The voters in rehear- 
sal started to their feet, and cast longing eyes 
toward the paradise thus opened to their view, 
and before Mr. Finch could give order one way 
or the other, they had broken all bounds, and 
rushed down, like so many harpies, on the ban- 
quet spread below. 

" If my eyes are not glandered," cried Mr. 
Finch, as soon as they were gone, " this is cap- 
ital sport. Dang me, Mr. Hopkins, if I wouldn't 
rather drive a tandem through a china-shop 
than manage these fellows. I've polished 'em 
a little, you see; but they're too thick on the 
wall yet, they daub and plaster and don't hard- 
finish up. You'd like to have 'em for a day or 
two, wouldn't you !" 

Puffer, descending from the inspector's seat, 
which he had filled during the rehearsal with 
all the gravity he could command, and, compli- 
menting Mr. Finch upon the show of his men, 
admitted that he would, and that he was there 
on that very business. 

" There isn't a better troop in town, though I 
say it," pursued the agent, "a little rough, but 
there's capital stuff there. 1 don't Hatter when 
I assert that Nick Finch gets up liner ami stur- 
dier rioters than any man in town. Only look 
at that eh;ip in the red shirt — he's a gtftllt, a 
perfect Nilghau with horns, in a crowd [" 



212 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



Puffer answered that he thought that prop- 
osition couldn't he safely denied. 

" Perhaps my sailors an't got the salt water 
roll exactly ; hut they'll pass pretty well I rec- 
kon for East river hoatmen and Hellgate pilots, 
and that's full as good ; you want twelve men 
for three days' work, in how many wards ?" 

"The whole seventeen if you please;" an- 
swered Puffer. " I'm afraid to try 'em in so 
many," continued Mr. Finch. " You might 
have 'em for five river wards, and one out o' 
town; and the volunteer fireman (he's first 
rate when he's warmed with a toddy), for any 
numher. Terms, twenty-five dollars per diem, 
as they say in Congress." 

" It's a bargain, sir," said Puffer, seizing the 
virtuous gentleman by the hand. "You'll 
bring them up yourself?" 

" I will, you may depend on it ; you're a lucky 
man — the other side offered me twenty, and as 
much oats as my horse could eat in a week, but 
it wouldn't do." 

With this understanding Puffer left ; the agent 
crying after him to call in on Monday week, 
when they would be finally broken in — " You 
make a capital inspector ; all you want is age 
and silver spectacles to make you as respectable 
a rogue as ever sat behind a green box !" 

Breathing the word " mum" in an under 
tone, and shaking his head in reproof at the 
hardihood of the agent, Puffer descended into 
the yard. 

He had reached the ground, and was turning 
to leave the place, when he discovered moving 
across the extremity of the yard and passing 
into a house many degrees poorer than the 
agent's, a figure bent with years ; he walked 
with a slow shuffling gait, and pausing often, 
wrung his hands and looked keenly into the 
earth, as if all his hopes lay buried there. Puf- 
fer knew not whether to advance and greet the 
old man as his heart prompted, or to withdraw ; 
when he raised his head as if he knew the foot- 
step that was near, and, discovering Puffer Hop- 
kins, started from the dotage of his walk and 
manner, hastened across the ground, and while 
his face brightened at every pace he hailed him 
from the distance. 

" God bless you, — God bless you, my boy !" 
cried Hobbleshank. " Where have you tarried 
so long ? You have not forgotten the old man 
so soon, eh ? If you knew how often I had 
thought of you, you would have paid me but 
fair interest on my thoughts to have called at 
the old man's lodgings, and asked how the 
world, a very wilful and wicked one, had gone 
with him ? Am I right ?" 

" You are, you are," answered Puffer, who 
could not fail to be touched by the kindly eager- 
ness of the old man. " I have abused your 
goodness, and was repenting of my folly but 
this morning — I meant to call." 

" You did !" said the old man quickly. " Well 
never mind that, but come with me." 

With this they entered a low building, the 
roof of which was moss-grown and hung over 



like a great ejebrow, and the door sustained 
by a single hinge, stood ever askew, allowing 
snow, tempest, and hail, to beat in and keep a 
perpetual Lapland through the hall. Opening 
the first door they entered a square room, cold, 
bare, and desolate-looking, with no soul appar- 
ently present. 

" How is this ?" said Hobbleshank. " 
thought Peter Hibbard dwelt here." 

" So he does," answered a broken voice from 
the corner of the apartment, " Peter Hibbard's 
body lodges here. Heaven save his soul — that 
may be wandering in some other world." 

" Are you Peter Hibbard ?" asked Hobble- 
shank, approaching the bed-side where the 
speaker lay. 

" Peter Hibbard am I," he answered, " as far 
as I can know, though I sometimes think Peter 
— one Peter — died better than a score of years 
ago. When a man's soul is killed and his 
heart frost-stricken, then he's dead, isn't he ?" 

"He should be!" answered Hobbleshank, 
" but Heaven isn't always so kind. Sometimes 
the body's dead and the soul all alive, like a 
fire, driving the poor shattered body to and fro, 
on thankless tasks and errands that end in de- 
spair : that's worse." 

" There's no despair for me," pursued Peter, 
disclosing a lean haggard face, and leering at 
Hobbleshank from under the blanket. " There's 
nothing troubles me; I've got no soul." 

" Where's your wife, Peter ?" asked the old 
man. 

" I've got none," answered the other. " No 
wife, nor child, nor grand-child, boy nor girl, 
nor uncle, aunt, sister, brother, or neighbor ; I 
and these four walls keep house here. 

" But where are your old friends ?" continued 
Hobbleshank. 

" Ah ! my old friends, there you are, are 
you? oh, ho! There was Phil Sherrod, he 
died in his bed of an inflamed liver ; Phil died 
finely they say, singing Old Hundred. Don't 
believe it; he yielded the ghost choking the 
parson with his bands. Parker Lent, at sea ; 
Bill Green, in jail for a stolen horse, it was St. 
John's pale horse they say ; Charlotte Slocum, 
she married a Long island milkman and was 
drowned. There was another," continued the 
bed-ridden man, rising in his couch and press- 
ing his hand upon his brow, and peering from 
under it toward Hobbleshank, and Puffer, " an- 
other." 

"Yes— what of her ?" asked Hobbleshank 
quickly. 

" What of her ?" he replied, " are you sure 
it was a woman ? Yes, by Heaven it was, it 
was ; a rosy buxom girl, but never Peter Hib- 
bard's wife, why not ?" 

With this question he fell back and lay with 
his eyes wide open and glaring ; but still and 
motionless as a stone. 

" Why not ?" said the bed-ridden man wak- 
ing suddenly from his trance of silence. " Why 
should Sim Lettuce win where I lost? That 
was a flaming carbuncle on Sim's nose, and 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



213 



many's the laugh Hetty and I have had think- 
ing of it ; and yet she married him spite of it." 

" And Sim died—what then ?" asked Hobble- 
shank, watching the countenance of him he 
questioned with painful earnestness. "What 
then, my good sir, what then ?" 

« Let me see — Sim died; the carbuncle struck 
in and turned to a St. Anthony's fire, and car- 
ried him off; Hetty turned nurse. Did you 
know that ? Nurse to a lovely lady ; she died 
too one day. Hetty went off— I followed her." 

"Yes, yes, you followed her," repeated 
Hobbleshank, anxious to keep the wandering 
wits of the sick man to the subject. " Go on." 

" I followed her — didn't I say so ! On my 
honor, red-nosed Sim's widow would not have 
me, eh ! eh ! not she. Off she slipped to keep 
a garden in an out-of-the-way place, I can tell 
you. Peter Hibbard watched her many a year, 
but she never would be Mrs. Hibbard, and here 
I lie this day without a wife, or child; child, 
nor grandchild, boy nor girl, nor uncle, aunt, 
sister, brother, or neighbor. We have a merry 
time, these four walls and I." 

It was in vain that Hobbleshank attempted 
again and again, and by various devices, to 
bring back his mind to a narrative humor ; he 
kept reciting the incidents of his hopelessness 
and desolation, and after a while fell into a wild 
jumble, where everything pointless and trivial 
was huddled together, and then he declined 
into a senseless torpor, where he lay dumb to 
every speech and entreaty of the old man. 

Leaving him in this mood, Hobbleshank and 
Puffer turned away from his bed-side and send- 
ing in a neighbor that had stood watching at 
the door, for on such chance aid the bed-ridden 
man trusted solely for life — to minister to his 
wants, they escaped swiftly from the place. In 
perfect silence they walked through street after 
street together, until they reached a corner 
where their way separated. 

" All is lost, all is lost !" said Hobbleshank 
grasping Puffer Hopkins by the hand, as tears 
flowed into his eyes ; and, parting without a 
further word, in gloom and silence, each took 
his way. 



CHAPTER XV. 

PUFFER HOPKINS INQUIRES AFTER HOBBLE- 
SHANK. 

" All is lost, all is lost !" The piteous look 
and tone with which the old man had uttered 
these words, lingered in the ear of Puffer Hop- 
kins, long after they had parted, and came up 
in every interval of business and labor, to fill 
the pause and excite in his mind a vague won- 
der as to what they might refer. Some deep 
trouble, some profound grief, reaching through 
years, and embracing the whole hope of the 
old man's life, they seemed to point at. He re- 
sumed the pursuit in which the messenger had 
14 



found him engaged, but every now and then 
there started out of the papers before him the 
wo-stricken face of Hobbleshank and he heard 
his voice, repeating again and again, that all 
was lost, lost. Wavering in this way between 
idleness and toil, night drew on ; a dark stormy 
and troubled night ; winds howling about the 
Fork, clamoring at the chamber-windows, 
where he lay, as if demanding entrance ; sub- 
siding, springing up afresh, and suggesting to 
the watcher, to whom the turmoil would not al- 
low sleep, thoughts of poor sailors far abroad, 
sailing on the wide ocean, reefing and gathering 
canvass, or lying-to, for shelter's sake, in cold 
harbors, or drifting along on the pitiless tide. 

Perplexed by thought of storm and tempest, 
in the midst of all which his mind had recurred 
to the subject of yesterday, Puffer awoke, and 
after in vain endeavoring to shake off the 
gloomy shadow of the old man that still haunt- 
ed his chamber, he resolved to call at the lodg- 
ings of Hobbleshank and seek there further 
confirmation of the good or evil of his thoughts. 

Making good speed for the fulfilment of his 
purpose, he was soon apparelled and in the 
open air. The sky was clear as if no cloud 
had ever crossed it; the house-tops lay basking 
in the early sun, and the streets, half shadow, 
half light, were filled with a throng of people 
come forth to enjoy the tranquillity of the 
morning. The distance was not great, and he 
found the place he sought at once, and in a mo- 
ment was directly at the entrance of the cham- 
ber, where he knew by his description, Hobble- 
shank lodged. 

The door was ajar, and Puffer entered with- 
out notice. On either side of the hearth the 
two old women were seated, discoursing in a 
whisper. A night taper flickered in its socket 
on the shelf; the fire was smouldering and ex- 
piring in its own ashes, and the sunlight, as it 
streamed through the small window in the wall, 
showed the features of the two women, hag- 
gard, care-worn, and anxious. The elder was 
speaking as he came in. 

" Why do you say me nay, when I tell you 
it must have tumbled in such a night ; I'm not 
deaf, good woman, though seventy and past — 
Heaven save us ! Do you think I did not hear 
the storm, howling and raging? Your own 
eyes saw the chimney fall, and the same wind 
that blows down chimney-stacks must overturn 
steeples and church-tops. Let me see — it was 
built before the war, so it had lived to a good 
old age, and was cut down not a minute before 
its time." 

" Why do you vex yourself with thinking in 
this way, Aunt Gatty ?" asked the oilier, lay- 
ing her hand gently in her arm and looking her 
anxiously in the face. "The Storm was heavy. 
God help our poor old friend that was abroad 
in it; but the city still stands P* 

"Be not too sure of that !" answered the oth- 
er. "Have a care! Are you quite clear that 
the fire-bell was not ringing all through the 
night ? I heard it in every pause of the storm ; 



214 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



and what is not blown over you may be sure 
was burnt up." 

" Grant it so," said Dorothy. " Grant, as 
you say, that the city was ravaged and torn 
from end to end by fire and tempest, it was no 
fault of ours !" 

" No fault of ours, do you say ?" cried Aunt 
Gatty, turning suddenly about, and laughing 
hysterically in her face. " Then all that howl- 
ing of winds meant nothing ? All the ships 
that went ashore or were dashed against piers 
and wharves, did it in mere sport ! Ha ! ha ! 
Children that perished in the streets, or in 
dwellings drearier than the open street, and 
beasts frozen in the field, were all in a frolic ? 
— Ha ! ha ! No, no," she continued, dropping 
her voice to a fearful whisper, " these were judg- 
ments — come near to me and I'll tell you how." 

Dorothy, at this bidding, drew close to her 
side, and watched for what she said. 

" Where was the old man last night ?" she 
asked, " can you tell me that ?" 

"Heaven knows !" echoed the other. " It's 
morning, and he has not come." 

" Did we go search for him ? — did we awa- 
ken neighbors, and raise the cry that a good 
old man was perishing somewhere, and hurry 
off in hunt for him ? Did we ring bells and 
alarm all sleepers through the town — that we 
do when even a worthless old building of boards 
is burning — why not for a dear old friend ? No, 
no — he's dead," she cried, in a voice that 
pierced the ear to the quick. " Dead, some- 
where, and his blood is on our old idle heads ! 
Dead! dead!" 

With this she turned away, and, heeding no 
further any speech that was addressed to her, 
sat in the corner of the hearth, mumping, and 
muttering unintelligibly to herself. At this 
moment Puffer Hopkins came forward, and 
made inquiry for Hobbleshank. 

" Good Lord ! you did not know then that 
the old man has been absent all night long !" 
she answered, sighing ; " she knows it, she 
knows it too well ! All night in the rough 
weather; Heaven send that he has found shel- 
ter in some shed, or under some poor roof, al- 
though it's not to be hoped. Have you seen 
the old man of late ? you are his friend." 

" I am, and saw him but yesterday morning," 
answered Puffer. "I expected, from what 
passed then, to find him downcast, but safe at 
home at least." 

" Good angels help us all !" cried Dorothy, 
fixing her eyes upon the ceiling ; " was he calm 
when you left him, or was he stirred with a 
passion ?" 

« Greatly moved, I must confess ; cut to the 
very heart, if I may judge by what fell from 
him," answered Puffer. " He was in despair, 
and left me weeping, hurrying swiftly away !" 

" I knew it would be so !" exclaimed Doro- 
thy—" I knew it would be so ! Arouse ! Aunt 
Gatty, arouse !" she continued, bending down 
to the ear of her companion, and crying at the 
top of her voice. " This gentleman has seen 



Hobbleshank, and has seen him fly away from 
him like one distracted ! Do you hear me ?" 

" Did you say Joe was dead ?" answered 
Aunt Gatty, gazing at the other like one in a 
dream. " I thought such a storm was too much 
for him." And she relapsed again into silence, 
or mumbled in confused and broken words. 

" Poor thing ! she thinks of her Joe that was 
drowned half a lifetime since ; watching all 
night through, with age and infirmity, have be- 
wildered her brain. She thinks, sorrowful crea- 
ture, that St. Paul's steeple, too, fell in the 
storm last night ; nothing can drive it from her 
mind ; and, because a neighbor's chimney was 
overturned and a few tiles blown through the 
street, she will have it that the storm has made 
a wreck of the city, leaving no stone upon 
another — poor thing !" 

" Then you have no tidings of Hobbleshank, 
and can not tell where he passed the night ?" 
asked Puffer. 

" None whatever. He left us," said Doro- 
thy, " yesterday, a little after noon, in cheer- 
ful spirits, for he had learned, by a poor stran- 
ger that came in from the country, something 
relating to his child that was lost many years 
ago. He said that a few hours would bring 
him back a happy man ; it will be happiness 
enough for us, alas ! — for this poor old woman, 
that has been his friend and companion for fif- 
teen years — if he come back alive." 

: ' Who was this poor stranger that you speak 
of?" continued Puffer. " Is he known to any 
one here, or did he utter his news aloud ?" 

"The stranger," answered Dorothy, "was 
stained with travel, and bore with him a parcel, 
which he did not open in our presence. Aunt 
Gatty thought it might be some garment of the 
child's that was lost. They spake apart, the 
stranger pointing often to the parcel under his 
arm ; something was said of a bed-ridden man 
— whom, we could not guess ; and then they 
went forth together. Since then the old man 
has not returned." 

" What noise was that ?" cried Aunt Gatty, 
starting up at this moment, and looking up ear- 
nestly into the face of Puffer Hopkins. " A 
heavy wall has fallen ; you heard the bell jin- 
gle as it fell ? It tolls for him !" 

" For Heaven's sake give her comfort," said 
Dorothy, appealing to Puffer, who stood aside, 
not knowing how to answer this sudden ques- 
tion; "tell her the city is not in ruins, that no 
church-steeple is cast down." 

" St. Paul's stands this morning," answered 
Puffer, "where it has stood many thousand 
mornings ; the sun shines upon its weathercock 
as high in air as ever. Would that Hobble- 
shank could be found as securely as that !" 

"Hobbleshank!" echoed Aunt Gatty, " I 
knew him in his lifetime; he was an excellent 
old man, and sorely tried ; let me see, where 
was he laid ? In Trinity yard ; oh, no, no, that 
was too full. In the middle burying-ground. 
He had no right there, poor man ; he was not 
stout enough to fill a grave. Ha ! ha ! I have 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



215 



it, it was in the old brewery well, where 
Tom was drowned ; they buried him there be- 
cause he knew Tom, when the poor boy was 
alive." 

"Does she indeed think her old friend to be 
dead ?" asked Puffer, looking from one to the 
other. 

" She does, and its that that has unsettled her 
mind," answered Dorothy ; " Her life seems to 
hang by some strange link, an invisible thread, 
on that of the old man ; with him she seems to 
think the sun is blotted out and all things fallen 
into decay, like herself. For her sake, I would 
that Hobbleshank might return." 

" There was no mark, then, by which you 
could guess his purpose, or the course he might 
take to bring it about ?" said Puffer Hopkins ; 
'* nothing by which you could judge, further 
than it involved a thought of the lost child — on 
what his mind is fixed ?" 

u Did I say there was nothing more? I was 
wrong. He wore with him when he left, he 
came back for it, a woman's likeness, painted 
in a breast pin ; the pin was a great square one, 
and the lady, a mild lovely creature, with 
gentle eyes. He took it from the closet, and 
fixed it in his breast, where it had not been 
in my knowledge, ever before. His look soften- 
ed when his eye fell on it ; and his step was 
slower, it seemed to me, and more thoughtful, 
when he left, than it had been when he came 
in. I thought the lady's face had touched his 
heart." 

" It's all darkness and shadow to me now," 
said Puffer, pondering and fixing his eyes upon 
the ground, " darkness, with a single ray of 
light : you have told me all ?" 

"All ! But do, I pray you, bring back the 
old man ; seek for him, as you would for your 
own father ! Spare no time, night or day to 
track his steps. There is some deep trust rests 
upon him, some great wrong to be avenged. If 
he die in the streets, with sealed lips ; if his old 
life should be taken by wicked hands, and such 
may be watching for him, who shall answer ? 
Will you try, will you seek him out ? Promise 
me on your truth !" 

As the woman spake she raised both her 
hands, and letting them fall, as in benediction, 
on the person of him she addressed, she watch- 
ed him silently for an answer. 

" I am but poor and helpless myself," an- 
swered Puffer, "with few friends and narrow 
means ; I know not what I can do, but, in 
God's name, I will do what I can ; what a 
friendless and fatherless young man may hope 
to do." 

" For his sake, for hers, for your own hu- 
manity's sake, be true to what you would do !" 
exclaimed Dorothy, glancing from the helpless 
old creature at the hearth toward Puffer, who 
stood, glowing with his good resolution, by the 
door. 

She had uttered the entreaty; turned to the 
old woman, who began to speak n'_, r ain, and, 
when she had turned again, Puffer was gone. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE NOMINATING CONVENTION HATCH A CAN- 
DIDATE. 

To what purpose had Puffer Hopkins pledged 
his efforts in tracing and recovering Hobble- 
shank ? What clew, what single clew remained 
in his hand, now that he reviewed all that had 
fallen within his knowledge, relating to the old 
man ? 

At one time it had occurred to him that light 
shone through upon his fortunes, from the 
chance discourse of the tailor ; that hope was 
at an end, for, on a requestioning he extracted 
no more than he knew already, and that was 
nothing to the purpose. 

Any hope that had arisen from the wish to 
enlist the personal services of his poor neighbor 
in a further search, was idle; for Fob, from 
overwork, feebleness of body, and, as it seemed 
to Puffer, some secret care that was preying 
upon him, was failing every day. To be sure, Fob 
dwelt upon the incident he had first recited the 
same as ever ; spoke of the look and voice of 
the old man ; his wild talk with the billows and 
breakers, and his final act in rending the parch- 
ment in pieces. Of what avail was this ? It 
might be a mere fantasy, a useless humor of both, 
that this man was Hobbleshank, this paper, the 
bond and tenure by which he held or relinquish- 
ed his rights. Then Fob would pass from this 
topic to talk of the old subjects, the country, the 
wood, the field; dwelling upon them with more 
enthusiasm than ever, and pausing at times, to 
bedew their memory with a tear. While his 
strength lasted, the little tailor performed his 
daily tasks manfully, murmuring not once, re- 
pining not at all, save over the remembrance 
of his country life. 

Any hope, therefore, built by Puffer on the 
services of Fob dwindled day by day. To what 
purpose, then, had Puffer Hopkins proffered aid 
in tracing and recovering Hobbleshank ? To 
none whatever ! Feeling this, and admitting 
to himself how completely darkness hedged 
him in. on every side, he determined — as most 
people do in such emergencies — to let the world 
take its course, but at the same time was ready 
to seize promptly on the first opportunity that 
offered, and, to do him justice, fervently hoping 
it might be near at hand, to execute his trust. 
In the meantime, and while the fortunes of 
Hobbleshank were so full of shifting currents 
that hurried onward, or eddies that tarried and 
were lost in themselves, the tide of public life 
rushed on, swelling steadily. Puffer had learn- 
ed by this time that pausing is to a politician, 
ruin; and so he kept himself abroad in the 
.stream. He was now known as an active and 
zealous partisan ; was regarded as a promising 
and rising young man; and somehow or other 
had found himself, by some secret agency, 
which he could not guess (it was the kind old 
man toiling lor liim in sileiu-e\ pushed forward 
steadily, and appointed to offices of conh 



216 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



and trust, as tliey arose in the due progress of 
his career. A convention to nominate a mayor 
for the city of New York, was soon to be held 
and assembled at Fogfire hall ; a delegate to this 
he was likewise appointed. Prompt in the per- 
formance of all his duties of this nature, Puffer 
only waited for the evening of its gathering to 
make his way to the hall. The night was 
somewhat stormy, and the streets were muffled 
and shrouded in mist, but this did not prevent 
its being quite apparent that something more 
than usual was afoot at Fogfire hall. 

Brighter lights streamed through the tap- 
room windows as he approached ; a din of 
voices was heard issuing forth and silencing 
the turmoil of the street, whenever the door 
opened ; and quick feet hurried in and out, and 
kept up a constant commotion at the door. The 
tap-room — at all times a resort of gossips and 
talkers — swarmed with politicians and quid- 
nuncs, some of whom were gathered in knots, 
from which a gusty voice would spring up every 
now and then above all others, and then subside 
again ; some walking the room in couples, arm- 
in-arm at a hurried pace ; some lounging about 
easily, with sticks in their hands from group to 
group, and others, dropping off from the knots 
of loud talkers, would saunter to the bar, and 
arraying themselves in front of a long round 
pole — a liberty-pole shaved down and shod at 
either end with brass — replenished the thirsty 
spirit without stint. The air of the place was 
close and odorous, and every man's face was 
flushed and wore a burnt and heated look, as if 
the tap-room lay directly in the fiery zone. 
Through this torrid region Puffer passed, recog- 
nising a friend or two by the way, and pausing 
for a grasp ; and emerging at a side door upon 
the hall, ascended a flight of stairs and was 
presently in the committee-room. 

The delegates there assembled in great num- 
bers, stood about the floor talking in groups, 
and growing red and excited as they plunged, 
by degrees, deeper and deeper into the topics of 
discourse. In a few minutes, when the room 
was quite full and the hubbub at its height, a 
pale man in whiskers stood up at the other end 
of the apartment, holding his hat in one hand 
and knocking with the knuckes of the other, 
with great vehemence, on a table at his side. 
This sound caused a sudden silence, and the 
members wheeling about in a body, contempla- 
ted any further movement on the part of the 
pale man in whiskers, with great interest ; 
which united gaze the pale man met with an- 
other quite as bold and decided, and, drawing a 
deep breath, he nominated, in a loud voice, Mr. 
Epaminondas Cobb, as chairman of the com- 
mittee; which was unanimously acceded to; 
then a couple of secretaries ; then a door-keep- 
er ; all of whom with due ceremony assumed 
their respective stations, and the committee 
was organized and in session. 

Then Mr. Epaminondas Cobb, who was a 
short brick-complexioned gentleman, with dim 
eyes, and a pair of stout silver spectacles 



astride a dignified, but by no means massive 
nose — stood up and asked them if it was their 
further pleasure to proceed to the nomination 
of a mayor for the city and county of New 
York ? To which question no response being 
given, it was concluded (the chief wisdom of 
public bodies in such cases lying in the obser- 
vance of profound silence) it was ; and they 
accordingly entered at once upon the exciting 
and engrossing business of nomination. 

Candidates were forthwith put in nomination 
by members with great rapidity ; some were 
merely named ; others proclaimed and sustained 
and advocated at length, in formal harangues. 
There was one committee-man, a little shrun- 
ken dried-up gentleman, who was up and 
down every five minutes, with a speech in ad- 
vocacy of the extraordinary and unquestionable 
claims of Thomas Cutbill, butcher; the said 
Thomas Cutbill being the great man of his 
neighborhood, the good Samaritan of his ward ; 
and, furthermore, a luminous expounder to the 
delight of the little committee-man and a knot 
of cronies, of profound political doctrine, at a 
familiar bar or coffee-room, where Mr. Cutbill 
condescended to be present of a Wednesday 
night and take a hand in backgammon or other 
intricate games, there going forward. 

" I knows Thomas Cutbill," said his cham- 
pion, " and his claims is decided ; pig lead isn't 
surer. A benevolenter gentleman and a more 
popular one was never known. To Mr. Cutbill 
the people was indebted for the new fish-mar- 
ket ; and asking who it was that invented the 
mode of ringing alarms by districts, he'd beg 
leave of the committee to say Cutbill was the 
man ! Cutbill had been vilified, but there never 
was a nicer man to the poor, a more lovely 
friend of the pauper, than that aggravated in- 
dividual. He was proud of Mr. Cutbill. Mr. 
Cutbill should have his vote !" 

When the little champion had uttered this 
vindication something like half-a-dozen times, 
a very mild gentleman remarked, that what the 
gentleman opposite had said was true enough ; 
Mr. Cutbill was a very benevolent and worthy 
individual, for he had to his knowledge, on 
several occasions arrested lads, ragged and un- 
clean lads, in the street, and advised them — in 
good faith advised them, laying his hand kind- 
ly upon their heads — to go home and wash their 
faces, and put on clean clothes ! What had 
the gentlemen of the committee to say to that ? 

On another occasion he had known Mr. Cut- 
bill lift a poor woman out of the gutter, take 
her by the arm and lead her directly into a re- 
spectable neighboring house, seat her on a sofa 
in the front parlor, and call out, with a vehe- 
mence worthy of himself and the charitable ob- 
ject he had in view, for a jug of hot negus im- 
mediately, and if that couldn't be had, for half 
a dozen of Seville oranges, for the poor lady. 
Wasn't that man worthy of their suffrages, he 
would like to know ? 

Just as this speaker was concluding there 
entered the committee-room in great state, a 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



217 



gentleman enveloped in a long brown overcoat, 
buttoned to the chin ; an ample bandanna 
muffling his lower features, and his head carried 
erect. He entered in a straight line, aimed for 
a blank corner of the room, looking about as if 
surprised that the committee could be in session 
and he not there — attaining which, he cast off 
his over-coat, unmuffled his chin, and rising at 
once bolt-upright in his place, proceeded to de- 
liver himself of his sentiments, first taking his 
hat by either rim and fixing it on more firmly 
than ever. 

" A single case was nothing this way or that," 
said the new comer, " did Mr. Cutbill make it 
a habit, he would like to know, to send ragged 
boys home for clean clothes ? Did he go about 
encouraging them to dismiss their broken gar- 
ments ? that was the point. Was or was not 
Mr. Cutbill privately associated, in interest, in 
some clothing or ready-made linen establish- 
ment ? Was Mr. Cutbill a tall man or a short 
man ? Did he wear red vestings or white ? 
Was he lean-featured or rubicund ? He would ' 
not vote for any man as candidate for the \ 
mayoralty of this great city until he knew his i 
person, his principles, his private habits, to a I 
hair — to an inch ! He might as well tell the I 
committee at once that he had his eye on a 
gentleman that would make the very candidate 
they wanted. On reflection, the gentleman al- 
luded to had differed from the community in 
some slight particulars ; he was a man in years, 
of a very venerable appearance, but somehow 
or other had fancied that all his grand-children 
were vinegar-cruets, and tried to unstoppel 
them by screwing their heads off. This had oc- 
casioned his going into the country for a time, 
and this would, perhaps, prevent his running at 
the approaching election." 

Opposite this speaker sat a thin, thoughtful 
gentleman, rather grotesquely habited in a red 
vest, which wrapped him round like a great 
Mohawk blanket, who watched what fell from 
him, touching the eccentric candidate, with ex- 
traordinary interest. 

The other was no sooner seated, than this 
individual stared to his feet, and stared wildly 
about. 

" The man he desired to see presiding over 
the destinies of this vast metropolis, was the 
very one that Mr. Fishblatthad just mentioned; 
but he couldn't be had ! Who then should it be ? 
Not the Cham of Tartary, he was quite sure: 
not the Imaum of Muscat, nor the King of the 
Pelew islands. He must be honest; honest by all 
means. He must be in favor of the largest lib- 
erty — boundless liberty, he might say ; also op- 
posed to all private rights. He wanted a man 
in favor of all colors — of no color himself. In a 
word, he must be opposed entirely to the present 
condition of things; but what condition of things 
he must be in favor of ho (the speaker) wouldn't 
at present, undertake to decide. This is no mu- 
sical forest," concluded the gifted declaimed, 
reiterating sentiments he had expressed many 
times before, but more particularly to our know- 



j ledge on Puffer's introduction to the Bottom 
Club. " This is no musical forest, no Hindoo 
hunter's hut, got up for effect at the amphithe- 
atre. We haven't trees here alive with real 
birds ! — the branches laden with living mon 
keys ! — the fountains visited by long-legged fla- 
mingoes ! — the green-sward covered with ga- 
zelles, grazing and sporting ! Oh, no ! we are 
a mere caucus of plain citizens, in our every- 
day dresses, sitting in this small room, on rough 
benches, to reorganize society by giving it a 
new mayor, worthy of ourselves !" And there- 
upon the illustrious chairman of the Bottom 
Club sat down. 

At the conclusion of this powerful and majes- 
tic effort, the committee might have laughed, 
had they not reflected that the speaker con- 
trolled a couple of hundred votes or so — the 
disciples and dependants of the Bottom Club — 
and they, therefore, on the contrary, looked ex- 
tremely grave and respectful. 

Candidates now began to be proclaimed by 
the score ; sometimes they were let slip — one 
by one in quick succession — then half a dozen 
propounders would rise and discharge their 
names among the committee in a body. The 
chairman was constantly up shouting order; 
and whenever a pause occurred, some member 
or other would spring to his legs and call their 
attention to the undoubted claims, the unsur- 
passed, unequalled, and unrivalled services of 
the Smith or Brown whom he happened to ad- 
vocate. 

At length, after a great number of ballotings, 
and a great variety of fortune, the contest was 
narrowed to two candidates ; upon these the 
divided members of the convention pitched their 
whole strength, and, stripping themselves to 
a final rencontre, they respectively entered 
upon the public and private history of the gen- 
tlemen in question, with a minuteness and 
eagerness of biographical ardor quite astonish- 
ing. 

One of these was Mr. Bluff, a wholesale 
grocer ; the other, Gallipot, a retail painter. 
Mr. Bluff was a stout, comely gentleman ; Gal- 
lipot, thin and livid, as became his trade. Mr. 
Bluff' leaned toward the elegant and ornate in 
dress ; Gallipot to the vernacular and home- 
spun. Mr Egbert Bluff exercised his whole- 
sale ingenuity in disposing of pipes, punch- 
eons, casks, and merchandise in gross; while 
the revenues of Gallipot accrued from the em- 
bellishment, by retail, of the houses of the mid- 
dle-class, the adornment of tradesmen's boards, 
and the displays of professional literature on 
attorneys' signs. Mr. Bluff', the master of every 
elegant accomplishment, from the delicate 
swaying of a cane, up to the cock of a hat and 
the proper wearing of a raffle — belonged to the 
Ionian order of candidates; Gallipot, rough in 
dress, blunt of speech, rude of grasp, was of 
the sterner Doric. 

The two candidates, 80 contrasted, stood 

palpably before the mind's eye of the commit- 
tee; and it W8J their present and immediate 



218 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



duty to determine, not the separate value of 
each of their qualities in itself; but their ag- 
gregate influence in either candidate on the 
community, and their value when translated in 
good current votes. 

How many streets — how many blocks, 
squares, wards, could they respectively com- 
mand ? All they had done through many years 
of struggle and endeavor in their various call- 
ings, for they were both men in middle-life, 
was now to be nicely weighed against ballots, 
little talismanic papers — the secret prescrip- 
tions of the public acting as the physician ; the 
whole life of each to be tallied off against so 
many of these mystic counters. 

" As for Mr. Bluff," said Mr. Fishblatt, who 
was always the first to deliver his views on the 
topic before the committee, " I beg to know 
whether it is true, as I am informed, he is the 
gentleman that wears a lepine watch with five 
jewels ? Before receiving an answer to this, 
I would inquire whether Mr. Bluff keeps a car- 
riage, with a black footman in a silver-buck- 
led hat and white cambric pocket-handkerchief? 
Also, could any member of the committee in- 
struct him whether Mr. Bluff's pew was lined 
with red damask and fastened with copper 
tacks, rotten-stoned every Saturday morning by 
one of his servants, privily admitted to the 
church ? Mr. Bluff" might dress his children 
in scalloped collars and laced pantalettes — the 
children of a public man did not always belong 
to the public (although he sometimes made it 
a present of them when he died), but what 
business had Mr. Bluff to put two stone dogs 
on his stoop ? If they had been lions, he (Mr. 
Fishblatt) might have forgiven him ; two great 
roaring, open-mouthed lions ; even a pair of 
elephants. These were noble animals. But dogs! 
Had any gentleman of the committee kept a di- 
ary of Mr. Bluff's doings for the past fifteen 
years ? Was any one prepared to say what 
had been his private and personal habits du- 
ring that time ? If not, the committee were 
entering upon a most solemn and important 
business, with very imperfect materials in their 
hands. He had heard that there had been a 
lurking committee, of five or more, to institute 
a watch upon Mr. Bluff; to have an eye upon 
all he did and said from the first moment he 
was contemplated as a candidate. Where was 
that committee ? They had followed him (Mr. 
Bluff), he had been informed in confidence, for 
more than two weeks ; knew all his opinions, 
as expressed in various places of public and 
private resort. Mr. Fishblatt would like to see 
their minutes. He had been told that Mr. Bluff 
had been measured, in all the past fortnight, 
for two new coats, and a new double vest of 
black velvet. What was the meaning of this 1" 

Mr. Fishblatt had spoken in his hat, which 
he- insisted on in despite the remonstrance of 
the brick-complexioned chairman, as being 
more formidable, and more according to strict 
congressional method, when, at this juncture, 
occasioaed hy the loud and peremptory character 



of his oratory or from some other adequate cause, 
a brass trumpet, fixed against the ceiling, was 
dislodged, and striking Mr. Fishblatt on the 
crown, buried him to the eyes. Before he could 
fairly emerge from this sudden midnight and 
renew his appeal, another speaker had posses- 
sion of the floor. 

" He had satisfied himself," this was a gentle- 
man of a very nice and accurate turn of mind — 
" of the exact number of three-story brick tene- 
ments in the city and county of New York. 
He wouldn't say how many there were, because 
he knew, and that was enough. Every brick 
tenement had its own voters — say three to each : 
very good. Around these were scattered a 
great many low-roofed wooden buildings. 
Three-stories was always commanding. Every 
three-story, that was his view, would carry 
three frame-houses with it to the polls. There 
was a calculation, and if Mr. Bluff wasn't the 
man, he had no more to say !" 

And so this calculating prodigy sat down. 

" Will the committee be cautious," followed 
a dark-looking member, with a low forehead, 
from which a shock of jet-black hair bristled 
and stood straight up, and a very harsh voice, 
" will they look out what they're at ? Gallipot's 
a painter; there's no objection to that. He's 
a working man, and rolls back his sleeves when 
he's on a job. He has a right. Peleg Gallipot's 
a popular man — who says he isn't ? What's 
the matter then ? I know what's the matter — 
Gallipot, this Peleg Gallipot afore the commit- 
tee, had lately painted a Presbyterian church ! 
There was a snag ; gel over it if you can !" 

To tell the truth, this was a snag ; the friends 
of Gallipot felt that it was, and, for a time, the 
Bluffites had it all their own way. Here were 
the religious prejudices of the community, by a 
single act of the unfortunate Gallipot, arrayed 
in deadly hostility against him ; all the other 
sects would go against him to a man. Galli- 
pot had, in some unhappy moment of profes- 
sional hallucination, painted a Presbyterian 
church. In this state of affairs the question 
was about to be put. 

" Hold a minute, my excellent friends," said 
the very mild gentleman who had spoken once 
before. " Mr. Gallipot wishes to get upon his 
legs, and I hope you will allow him a chance. 
They need have no fears — they might put their 
minds at rest at once about a religious antip- 
athy to Mr. Gallipot. It was true, and he felt 
it his duty to confess it, Mr. G. had painted a 
Presbyterian church a short time ago ; it was 
also true, and he felt great pleasure in being 
able to make the statement, Mr. G. was now 
also under contract to paint an Episcopal 
church, also a Quaker meeting-house, also a 
Unitarian chapel. There was an antidote ; and 
now, the sooner they went into an election, the 
better he and other friends of the poor man's 
candidate (as he would venture to call his 
worthy friend) would like it !" 

Notwithstanding another last desperate at- 
tempt on the part of Mr. Cutbill's champion to 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



219 



press tha claims of that philanthropist on their 
attention, they did go into an election, and 
Gallipot was the man. The announcement of 
this result was hailed by the friends of Galli- 
pot in the committee, with shouts and stamping; 
and as soon as it was made known below, 
where they had been kept throughout the eve- 
ning in a state of feverish excitement by the 
contradictory reports of various members, who 
had dropped down into the tap-room from time 
to time, by similar demonstrations. 

During all these deliberations, harangues, 
and ballotings of the convention, Puffer, under 
judicious advisement, had refrained from any 
public expression of his opinions ; but, as an 
offset to this inactivity, had gone about the 
committee-room and declared himself privately, 
separately, and apart, to each member, in be- 
half of his candidate, and had taken great 
pains, when it came to a final and decisive bal- 
lot, to cast his vote — and to have it so known 
by his friends, in favor of Gallipot, the strong- 
est man. When the committee was dismissed, 
to avoid troublesome questionings or reproach- 
es, Puffer escaped as swiftly as he could, not 
even tarrying to interchange a word with Mr. 
Halsey Fishblatt, who, somewhat discomfited 
by the sudden rebuff he had met, pushed his 
way, as stately as ever, through the crowd in 
the bar-room, not deigning speech or recognition 
to a solitary soul. 

Did no thought of the kind old man enter 
Puffer's mind as he departed from Fogfire hall? 
No thought of the first strange interview, the 
kind counsel, the anxious look ? It did ; and 
Puffer dwelt upon it till it all rose up anew be- 
fore him, bright and fresh as the reality. Out 
of the past — the brief but eventful interval — 
the old man came shambling forth with the old 
gait, the sidelong demeanor, the one eye closed 
and the other fixed upon him. He walked by 
Puffer's side all the way home to the Fork ; 
and when sleep and darkness again closed 
upon him, again the little paralytic crossed and 
re-crossed before him in tears and laughter; 
and was, finally lost in a deep gloom, which 
compassed him in and shut him from the sight. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CERTAIN DISTINGUISHED PERSONS NEGOTIATE 
WITH THE NEWSBOYS. 

The two parties, it was now quite obvious, 
were rapidly approaching the field of encounter. 
Both were on the alert for recruits ; busy at the 
drum, keeping up such uproar as they could ; 
summoning meetings ; despatching spies to the 
opposite camp ; in a word, availing themselves 
of every opening to obtain an advantage over 
the adversary. Among other schemes, it was 
thought expedient to secure, as early as possible, 
the services of a corps of bold, active, and 
ready-witted bill-posters, who would not only 



come in aid of the Bottom Club and other fra- 
ternities of that class, in laying waste and rav- 
aging the enemy's placards, but also serve, by 
their ingenuity and vigor, to give prominence 
and conspicuous display to their own calls and 
handbills. 

On this service Mr. Fishblatt and Puffer 
Hopkins, as combining great readiness of in- 
vention, with handsome powers of persuasion, 
were named ; and Puffer, accordingly, one eve- 
ning called by appointment on his associate, to 
set out with liim on the performance of this del- 
icate duty. 

Mr. Fishblatt was discovered, as might per- 
haps have been expected, in his high-backed 
chair, in nearly the same attitude as before, 
with an immense newspaper — it was larger 
than the other, and had sprung up in the inter- 
val — in his outstretched arms ; his feet braced 
against the wall, amd ranging with his eye up 
and down the long columns of solid print, like a 
dragoon under demon aical possession. It was 
a little time before Puffer's entrance caught his 
attention ; but when it did, he sprang suddenly 
to his feet, welcomed him, and spreading the 
great sheet over a horse by the fire — which con- 
trivance he had been driven upon by the extra- 
ordinary expansion of the weekly press — said 
he would be ready in a trice. 

" A wonderful age this," said Mr. Fishblatt, 
while in the act of enduing his long brown 
overcoat, " an astonishing, an immense age ; all 
the ages that have gone before it, should be 
counted as nothing, sir, and this year, this very 
year of our Lord, should be called the year one. 
We do our ancestors too much honor by keep- 
ing any accounts with them. We should cut t 
them at once ; deny any knowledge of them. 
They were a poor, mean, miserable set of sneak- 
ing folio-readers ; do you know that ? The editor 
of this paper, sir," pursued Mr. Fishblatt, grasp- 
ing a sturdy stick that stood in a corner, " is a 
wonderful man. His sheet is two inches longer 
and four inches broader than any other in the 
country; he always has news an hour and 
three quarters in advance of the regular mail ; 
and he has lately — there's enterprise for you — 
purchased a small blood poney to ride down to 
the office with his leaders. It's astonishing to 
think what a popularity this man enjoys ; he's 
known from one end of the country to the other, 
and gives us a half column of notices of his 
paper every week, speaking of him — him in- 
dividually — in the very handsomest terms. 
There's the Nauvoo < Bludgeon' says he wields 
a trenchant and vigorous pen — yes sir, the 
Nauvoo « Bludgeon' says that. Then the Poto- 
mac 'Trumpet' admits he has an unrivalled 
genius for the more elegant species of compo- 
sition ; and by the western 'Thunder-gust,' 
which has just come in, I see they allow him 
< a penetrating eye and a remarkable talent for 
journalism.' He's a wonderful man; we must 
go." And forth they issued. They struck 

through the heart of the city for the quarter 

they were in quest of; Mr. Fishblatt, whenever 



220 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



they passed through an obscure street, unbend- 
ing a little and addressing his companion in a 
familiar tone, but as soon as ever they were 
abroad again in a great thoroughfare, he 
stretched himself to his full stature, and march- 
ed forward very gravely, without so much as 
uttering a word. From the manner in which 
he wielded the cane that he bore in his hand — 
sometimes twirling it about in his fingers, some- 
times making a home-thrust at an imaginary 
object just before him — he may have been em- 
ployed in revolving a passage or two of decla- 
mation ; anyhow, so they walked on. An old 
dingy building soon stood before them and they 
knew they had reached their destination. The 
quarter in which they had arrived was gross, 
squalid, and unclean, and the building itself 
seemed a natural production of the soil, and not 
the work of human hands. A broad gaping 
area was there, in which such other fungi of 
the place as broken quarter-kegs, stocking- ends, 
and shattered hats, lay in heaps about, and into 
this they plunged. 

They descended a few steps, and, by the aid 
of a flickering lamp, getting into an unclean 
passage, the walls of which were embellished 
with numerous impressions of small hands 
taken in primitive earth, they reached a door 
from which a great hubbub of voices and con- 
fused sounds constantly escaped. Here they 
entered, and found themselves in a low-roofed 
apartmeut lighted by various glittering and re- 
splendent reflectors pinned against the upright 
posts at the side ; around the whole room there 
was a narrow bench, and at the farther ex- 
tremity was a desk several feet above the level 
of the floor. Puffer and his companion were 
ushered to a place by the side of the desk ; a 
tall young gentleman, who seemed to act as 
president, or chairman, stood up and knocked 
on the boaid before him, in imitation of a popu- 
lar tune, when there came pouring in at a side 
passage, which Puffer had not at first observed, 
a swarm of youths, of all sizes, ages, and com- 
plexions ; dressed in all possible varieties of ap- 
parel; and bearing themselves with as great 
freedom and independence of demeanor as any 
number of gentlemen that could be found. 
Many of them bore in their hands threepenny 
pies, out of which, from time to time, they cut 
a mouthful ; many more carried cigars in the 
corners of their mouths, at which they puffed 
with an exemplary vehemence and unction. At 
another bidding they were all seated, or gather- 
ed in groups and clusters about pillars in the 
middle of the apartment, and pausing for a sea- 
son in their respective labors, turned their 
faces toward the tall chairman. 

" Ge'mmen !" said the chief of the news- 
boys, rising in his place, having first priggishly 
buttoned his coat and thrust a broken yellow 
handkerchief in his breast, " Ge'mmen !" said 
he, " we all knows what we've come here for 
to-night. You know, Tom Hurley, and Joe 
Shirks, and Bill Gidney, what we're come here 
for to do. We all knows what a low ebb 



'Mery-kin literature had got to, when we took 
hold of it. We all knows what it is now — the 
wery pride and ornament of the earth. I can 
say it of a truth, ge'mmen, that Bill Gidney, 
the activest news-boy in the metropolis, is a 
honor to his species, so is Joe Shirks, and so 
is Tom Hurley. Where was natyve genius afore 
we took hold of it ? it was a bud in the worm, 
a undeveloped onion. What's the complaint 
now ? There's too much genius, too much sur- 
prisin' talent, and keen obserwation, and over- 
powerin' eloquence. King Solomon and the 
greasy wise men 'ud be ashamed o' themselves 
if they only knew Mr. Flabby, what edits the 
' Empty Puncheon,' or Mr. Busts, what con- 
ducts the 'Daily Bladder,' or Mr. Bloater, 
what writes four-horse leaders for the ' Junk 
Bottle,' but what's going to be the head man of 
the new and interestin' paper called the ' Mam- 
moth Mug.' That'll be a remarkable paper, 
gemmen, depend on it ! The uncommon quan- 
tity of brains put into that newspaper will 
be mere waste ; it'll be a extravagant usin' 
up o' the human intellect. For myself, ge'm- 
men, if you ask my views of liter-a-toor, I 
don't hesitate to say, in one sense o' the word, 
excuse the expression, it's nothin' but a power- 
ful combination o' rags and brass ; by which I 
means to say it takes a uncommon quantity o' 
rags to make the paper out of, and it takes a 
uncommon sight o' brass and courage to make 
the paper full o' reading matter. Now what's 
our duty ? Shall we give the cause of natyve 
genius the go-by ; a sort of a wink to a blind 
horse, instead of a nice nod of encouragement ? 
As long as we can make twenty-five off a hun- 
dred, and lunches, shall we give it up ?" 

Here the speaker was interrupted by a ter- 
rific and general cry of " No, no." " Carry 
that man to Bellewue, he's lost his wits !" 

It was quite obvious that his excellency, the 
chairman, was prepared still further to thrill 
and enlighten them with his peculiar eloquence; 
but at this stage of the proceedings there came 
into the meeting, pushing his way through the 
news-boys, with the most easy, natural, and 
serene self-possession, a stout, blustering fel- 
low, with great staring eyes — not altogether 
ill-looking either — a red neckerchief about his 
throat, a frock-coat flaunting from his side, his 
hair in disorder, and his countenance beaming 
with a broad unrestrained expression of assu- 
rance and conceit. This was an editor. It 
was Piddleton Bloater himself; and Piddleton 
Bloater, the mighty, the immense, the im- 
measurable, had come to bargain with the 
news-boys to take an interest in a new journal 
in which he was about to embark his magnifi- 
cent talents. 

" The new paper to be issued on Saturday 
morning," said Mr. Bloater, looking gigantic, 
so as to overawe the juvenile gentry before him, 
" will be the completest paper ever published ; 
eight feet square, honest measure ; illustrated 
by the most splendid wood-cuts, head-pieces, 
tail-pieces, and so forth, by the most celebrated 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



221 



artists. Correspondents in every quarter of the 
world. We have already engaged Commission- 
er Lin for the Chinese department; President 
Boyer, of Hayti, does the African branch. The 
board of directors of the N. Y. Gas company 
are retained as regular contributors. Mr. JBui- 
flnch Twaddle will furnish a poem to every 
number. We expect to have a circulation of 
one hundred and fifty thousand by the end of 
the present year ; iu fact we have it already, 
although they haven't all paid in yet. We in- 
tend to make the ' Mug' the most remarkable 
journal of the day. The ' Mug' must go. Don't 
all speak at once !" 

Here the orator produced from his coat-pocket 
a great red handkerchief, the duplicate segment 
of that about his neck, which he unfurled with 
a flourish, and disclosed before the gaze of the 
assembled news-boys, the words " The Mam- 
moth Mug — Edited by Piddleton Bloater, 
Esq.," wrought thereon in portentous capitals. 
This movement was hailed with a cheer, and 
as he waved it about his head, and reddened in 
the face by the exertion, the cheers grew in 
energy and emphasis. 

" But, gentlemen," continued Mr. Bloater, 
when the enthusiasm had a little abated, sink- 
ing his voice to an awful whisper, " there's a 
secret I've got to disclose that will astonish 
you. Prepare yourselves. Brace up, and hold 
fast of each other. Rum-fusti, the patriarch of 
Jerusalem, is employed to write an entirely 
original continuous tale for the 'Mug;' to be 
contributed exclusively to the ' Mug' and to no 
other paper !" 

This had a fine sounding style, and the news- 
boys, from the very circumstance of not appre- 
hending it very thoroughly, cheered and shout- 
ed more heartily than ever. With this tremen- 
dous announcement Mr. Piddleton Bloater 
paused, and taking a note-book from his pocket 
said he was ready for orders, but hoped they 
would restrain themselves, and not come on too 
fast. 

"Eight feet square, that's ever so many 
thousand surface inches !" said Master Tom 
Hurley, a pale-faced news-boy apparelled in a 
long tailed coat with metal buttons. "I'm 
death for the ' Mug,' Mr. Bloater. I'll cut the 
* Empty Puncheon,' and take a hundred « Mugs' 
to start with." 

" The Puncheon ! How in the name of Heav- 
en could any one patronize that miserable abor- 
tion !" exclaimed Mr. Bloater. " Flabby's a poor 
withered alligator, and the Puncheon a mere 
'pothecary's show-bottle, that shines a mile or 
two off, but's nothing after all but colored wa- 
ter, and that not fit to drink." 

" If Rum Buster out o' Noah's ark writes for 
the first number," said Master Gidney, a small, 
corpulent, jolly-looking fellow, in a roundabout 
and tasselled cap, grinning and speaking upas 
he cocked it on his brow, " I'll cut in for a 
gross of number one ; if I seed his Tale's name 
in big letter on the fences, it 'ud give me con- 



fidence, and I might go in for a couple o' hun- 
dred ; but that's as many as 'ud do, till I have 
a interview with the fireboard makers." 

Mr. Bloater, not exactly understanding how a 
privity of knowledge between the fireboard 
makers and Master Gidney could affect the sale 
of the Mug, looked upon the youth approvingly, 
and dashed his open palm upon his leg, crying 
out that was "juicy and just the thing!" 

" I think Busts, of the ' Daily Bladder,' is 
breaking down," interposed another news-vend- 
er, in a suit all shreds and patches, with an un- 
clean face, uncombed hair (the prevailing fash- 
ion of the place), and no covering to his head. 
" He writes all his editorials in a cheer made 
out of the staves of a rum-cask. He loves the 
smell of the thing wonderfully ; and has to be 
tied in by the foreman while he's writin'. Busts 
writes a history of his sprees over-night in 
somebody else's name, and that fills up the po- 
lice head. I'll take fifty 'Mugs,' fresh and 
bright with the froth on." 

" The best thing you can do, my lad !" cried 
Mr. Bloater, from where he stood, smiling. 
"That Busts is a poor miserable wretch; a vi- 
per in the uniform of the rifle brigade, and he 
kills character by the platoon. They call Busts 
a keen observer of life ! so he is, of animal- 
culae that live in the kennel. There isn't a 
viler wretch on the face of the earth than this 
same Busts, if you except Flabby, of the 'Emp- 
ty Puncheon !' But how many copies do you 
take, Mr, Chairman ?" asked Mr. Bloater, 
turning toward that functionary; " I know you 
to be one of the longest-legged and loudest- 
voiced of the society." 

" That's a wery delicate question, sir," an- 
swered the president, rising with dignity, and 
buttoning his coat calmly as he ascended, " a 
wery delicate question — unless I was informed 
of the principles the Mug's to be conducted on ; 
does it go Captain Kidd or the moral code ?" 

" Captain Kidd, decidedly," rejoined Mr. Pid- 
dleton Bloater. " We shall pirate all foreign 
tales regularly; and where we can purloin 
proof-sheet3 shall publish in advance of the 
author himself; shall in all cases employ third- 
rate native writers at journeyman cobbler's 
wages, and swear to their genius as a matter 
of business ; shall reprint the old annuals 
and almanacs, systematically, as select extracts 
and facetiae, and shall reproduce their cuts and 
illustrations, as new designs from the burin of 
Mr. Tinto, the celebrated engraver." 

" That'll do— that'll do !" cried the chair- 
man, interrupting the speaker. " Set me down 
for the balance of the fust edition ; it'll be a fust- 
rate paper and conducted on fust-rate princi- 
ples." 

" There's another thing," said Mr. Bloater, 
continuing the subject, " another thing to be 
distinctly and clearly understood. Whoever 
writes the chief article of the Mug is to be the 
great writer — the biggesl penman in America, 
for that week. For instance, if it should even 



222 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



be Busts or Flabby, Flabby is to be advertised his person, and thrust it in one of the nether 



as an angel, in large caps, and Busts as a genius 
of the first water." 

" Of course !" cried the president, " of 
course !" echoed the newsboys to a man, who 
understood this policy thoroughly. 

" With this understanding I'll say goodnight 
to you," said Mr. Bloater, wiping his brow. 
" I hope you'll be in good voice for the first 
day ; I'd suggest a little practice in crying false 
alarms for a night or two, the length of half a 
dozen streets." 

" We does that regularly," answered Master 



pockets of his coat. " The vacation of a bill- 
sticker is a highly honorable one, and admits of 
a great expansion of natural talent. What 
does he do ? Why, Mr. Chairman, he makes 
dumb walls and dead stones speak ; he puts a 
tongue in the old thirsty street-pump ; and he 
causes shutters and bulk-heads to cry aloud and 
shout out, at all hours, day and night — night 
and day. Isn't that enough ? Where do you 
find the bill-sticker ? Why, he's at the bottom, 
the very prime mover and getter-up of all pub- 
lic gatherings, concerts, lectures, balloonings, 
Joe Shirks, " and some of us goes on amateur [ ballottings, packet-sailings, fairs, shows, and 



duty as oyster-boys, when shellfish 
and big enough to cry." 

With this satisfactory assurance, Mr. Piddle- 
ton Bloater departed, sounding the natural 
trumpet of his nose with all his might as he 
went. 

" Who knows but some of these youth," 
asked Mr. Fishblatt, who had been thrown in- 
to temporary shade by the presence of so as- 
tounding a genius, wheeling about and looking 
Puffer full in the face, "may come to serve their 
country one of these days in the halls of legis- 
lation ? Who knows but Nature may be un- 
consciously training in the crier of a ' Junk 
Bottle,' a future speaker of the house ? or in 
the street-shouter of the 'Empty Puncheon,' a 
leading congressional orator ? I begin to think 
it's the true training for rhetorical talent ; and 
why should not their ambition be turned in this 
direction ? My young friends and Mr. Presi- 
dent," he continued, elevating his voice, now 
that he was fairly roused, and falling back a 
step or two, " to return to what I was about to 
say when interrupted by Mr. Bloater, I would 
put it to your patriotism, whether you should 
not withdraw for a time from the literary lux- 
ury of crying the news, and take an active part 
in public affairs. Here is a noble opportunity 
to serve your country, my young friends : don't 
let it pass. Gidney, and Shirks, and Hurley 
— for such I understand to be the names of some 
of you — have now an enviable opportunity of 
achieving lasting glory. Think of it; you may 
save your country ; the conspicuous exhibition 
of a placard by your ingenuity, may draw to 
the polls, say only a single voter, that voter 
casts for Gallipot, and the business is done. 
Give up everything to serve your country, 
abandon your cherished pursuits, sacrifice your 
feelings, and endear yourselves to all the good 
and virtuous and public-spirited throughout 
this great metropolis — this mighty nation !" 

" For my part," responded Mr. Gidney, who 
was the first to rise, " I considers it degradin' for 
a newsboy to become a bill-sticker ; it's lower- 
in' oneself in the scale of society and makin' 
a object of hisself for all future times and gen- 
erations. The woice of fame is agin it." 

" You are wrong, my young friend," contin- 



spectacles. He's the prompter and bell-puller 
of society. Isn't this an honorable calling ? 
Why, sir, next to the popular preacher and the 
popular author, the bill-sticker is certainly the 
greatest benefactor of his race !" 

As soon as Mr. Fishblatt had taken his seat, 
after this powerful outbreak, Master Joe Shirks 
rose to reply. 

" We can't do it — no how," said Master 
Shirks, addressing the chair. " We are pledged 
contrarywise to the citizens of New York. 
What'll they say, I'd like to know, when you, 
Mr. Chairman, and I, and Bill Gidney here, 
loses our voice, and cry no more papers than if 
we was dumb-fish and flounders. Papers must 
be cried; and there's the extras — who's to 
know anything about that 'ere sudden murder, 
where a affectionate husband has chopped his 
wife into tender-loins with a new broad-axe ? 
Or that 'ere dreadful case of explosion, where 
the benevolent gentleman has called a tea-par- 
ty over his steamboat-boiler, and blowed 'em 
all to atoms, with gitting the fun and the jolli- 
fication up too high ? What's to become of 
these little things, sir, if we go off duty? It's 
easy to see, without a telyscop, or a constable's 
peepers, the city 'ud have a shock of the apo- 
plexy, and go into fits regularly till we begun 
to cry again. The newsboys, sir — and we all 
knows it, but we're too modest to say it out of 
doors — is the moral lamplighters of this 'ere 
city. The ge'mman talks about public affairs ; 
that's a good 'un, as if we didn't keep the pub- 
lic mind straight about all that 'ere ! If the En- 
glishes go up into the bowels of China, and 
drink up all the old hyson, that's been laid 
away there, drying and gitting strength for four 
hundred year, I guess we knows it ! What's 
the use of all our private interviews with the 
pressmen and clerks about extras, if it don't 
come to that ? By private advices we learns 
that the Florida Indians all waded in a body 
into a large swamp, and committed soo-cide by 
holding each other's heads under water, on the 
nineteenth instant ; where do you get all that 

j from, old fellow ? — why, from newsboy Tom, 

I or newsboy Bill, or Joe Shirks, your sarvant. 

! I'm agin the motion, Mr. Cheerman, anc" 
move we stick to our business and lets every- 



ued Mr. Fishblatt, rising again, majestically, body else stick to theirs!" 

stretching out his right hand and depositing it I Another young gentleman followed who 

on the desk top, while he passed his left behind \ couldn't think of the proposition, as he had 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



223 



been assured, from good sources, that there 
were to be four powerful extras issued in the 
course of the month, containing a vast deal of 
inflammable information in advance of all the 
regular packets, steamers, and stages ; and, for 
his part, he wouldn't lose the chance. Theatre- 
money was low in his pocket, he hadn't seen a 
mellow-drama for a week, and it was asking 
too much of him. 

Another was willing to do all he could to for- 
ward the proposition ; but he'd like to know 
why the gem'men didn't stick the bills himself; 
he seemed to have good legs of his own, and a 
very respectable pair of reachers. At this sug- 
gestion the chairman cried " order," and there 
was a general shout of disapprobation at the 
line of questioning adopted by the young 
gentleman. 

After a pretty thorough discussion of the sub- 
ject, when no satisfactory result seemed pos- 
sible, the chairman himself arose. 

" Ge'mmen !" said he, " This'll never do. 
These ge'mmen come to us with the very high- 
est recommendations, and from the very most 
respectable quarters. We mustn't let 'em go 
away without a lift. We can help 'em, and 
we must. Now there is in this very meeting, 
and I'm not afraid to say it, certain young 
gentlemen that had better go to be bill-stickers 
afore their healths is ruined and entirely bro- 
ken up. There's one of us — I don't mention 
names, ge'mmen — that bursted his voice on ex- 
tra Junks last week ; he was entirely too wio- 
lent on the China question. His voice is gone. 
Then there's another of us — you recollect him, 
ge'mmen — who broke down (there was a sight 
for you) in the wery middle of the street, with 
a wery exciting number of the ' Puncheon' 
(containing all them pleasant particulars about 
the two dead bodies found in a gen'leman's 
iron safe) under his arm, tryin' to do justice to 
it. How many wictims of weto messages there 
is in this room I wouldn't like to say; but I do 
know that a weto message from the presidin' 
chief of these United States and a influenza, is 
equally fatal to the woice of the newsboy. 
Then there's you, Ikey Larkins,'' continued the 
chairman, addressing a lumbering, overgrown 
fellow that stood shouldering a post in the cor- 
ner ; " haven't I told you more nor twenty 
times that you'r beyond the newsboy age. It's 
immoral of such a weteran as you to be cryin' 
papers about New York streets ; don't you see 
that you're too big a build, that your'e lame of 
one leg and short of an eye ; and yet you will 
keep hanging about the offices, and cutting in 
as if you was born to the business. Ge'mmen, 
let's give Mr. Fishblatt six to begin with (Ikey 
Larkins for one), and throw 'em in one a day 
as fast as they break down. It's carried !" 

And in this summary way the mission of 
Puffer Hopkins and Mr. Fishblatt was accom- 
plished, and amid an uproar of cries, among 
which they heard above all others " Three 
cheers for the cheer !" and " Ikey Larkins is a 
extra foolish!" — they left. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

STRANGE MATTER ; PERHAPS NOT WITHOUT 
METHOD. 

At early morning — the very hour, or nearly 
so, when Puffer Hopkins was holding an inter- 
view with the two women — an aged figure, 
wild and distracted, wandered about the fields 
beyond the city. His steps were uncertain 
and his whole look and action full of confusion 
and doubt ; he seemed to be seeking something 
that was not to be found, and wherever he cast 
his eyes, wondered that it was not there. 
Where he had passed the night, God only 
knows ; but now that it was morning, he came 
abroad, drenched, disordered in dress, and 
wavered and groped about in the clear sunshine 
as if it had been mist. Bewildered and with 
troubled steps, he crossed the low hollows and 
meadows ; straggled more perplexed than ever 
through a crowded orchard; and at length 
stood on an ancient highway, the old Post 
Road. The moment his steps touched the 
road they seemed on a familiar track ; his look 
brightened, and with a gleaming countenance 
he glanced about, till his eye fell on an old 
faded country house. What joyful and happy 
gleams broke through the old man's features 
as he looked upon that old faded house ! His 
eyes sparkled, his hands trembled for joy, and 
he raised them up and stretched them forth as 
if he could grasp that building, as a familiar 
friend, by an outstretched hand. Then the 
brightness passed away from his look, he was 
deeply moved, and in his agitation could 
scarcely drag himself to the spot where his 
eyes were fixed. With trembling hand he lift- 
ed the latchet of the gate; and as he walked 
up the path he shook like one in a spasm. 

Many times he walked round and round the 
house before he entered. Then he went to the 
rear, raised a door that led to a ground cellar, 
and peered for a long space down into the 
gloom of the earth before he would descend. 
Through heaps of lumber, old decaying casks, 
and other ancient fragments, he picked his 
way; holding his breath and spreading out his 
arms before him. He soon found stairs that led 
into the upper chambers, and climbing these, 
he was in an apartment all dust and darkness, 
still as death, barren and silent as the grave it- 
self. He paused and listened, as if he expect- 
ed the approach of some well-known tread; 
the greeting, perhaps, of a familiar voice. No 
voice answered — how could it at that lapse of 
time, unless it had lingered in the corners and 
recesses of the chamber, years after its own- 
er was laid in the earth ? 

" Shall I let the morning light in upon all 
these?" said the old man, who called up in his 
mind a vivid image of all thai this chamber 
held; "not yet; I think I could not bear it 
yet! I know that broad day is without," he felt 
it more because of the darkness, n but I dare 
not let it in this chamber yet." 



224 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



With this he moved about the apartment, 
touching everything with his hand — gently and 
kindly as a blind man, features and faces he 
would know — until he had gone through every 
article about the room, save one, and that was 
a chair — a simple, old-fashioned armchair, that 
stood by the hearth. He many times approach- 
ed this as if he would know it as he had known 
whatever else was there ; but his heart gave 
out and he fell back, leaning, in the darkness, 
against whatever chanced to be nearest. 

Wrought upon by his own fancy and these 
acts of association, finding these many endeav- 
ors to no purpose, he rushed to a window, burst 
its hasp, and casting its shutters wide back, 
turned about and straining his gaze upon the 
empty chair by the hearth, he fell down like 
one in a fit. 

Recovering, when the mid-day began to pour 
its warm beams into the chamber, he looked 
about the apartment, dwelling for a long time 
on each object ; but when his eye fell on a door 
which led into a small chamber in one corner 
of the room, a change came over his counte- 
nance, and he turned aside as if he dared not 
look that way again. Presently, however, and 
seemingly moved thereto by some sudden im- 
pulse, he proceeded to the door, which was 
closed, drew it open, and clutching the door-post 
to hold him up, he leaned forward and looked 
within. There was nothing there but a narrow 
truckle-bed with a single tattered blanket upon 
it, and the cords, such as were visible, moulder- 
ing and dragging upon the floor; and yet what 
a shuddering horror crossed the old man's face 
as he gazed upon it, how he trembled and bore 
heavily against the door-post, as if he had been 
smitten blind and helpless by the shock of a 
sudden blow. 

He could neither enter nor retire, but stood 
there like one rooted to the earth. His mind was 
dwelling on what had passed there twenty years 
before; a little hideous old man, older than 
himself, lay, shivering under that blanket — he 
saw every line of his countenance — resting on 
his elbow, straining his ear to catch what pass- 
ed in the neighboring chamber, and chuckling 
like a fiend, as he listened. 

Consciousness and some power of motion 
by degrees came back ; he went away and sat 
down for a time, lost in a deep revery ; then 
he rose, and going forward cautiously, as if 
under the horrible belief that that other old 
man was lying in wait within — he closed the 
door, turned the key in the lock which groaned 
aloud, and caused him to start ; placed a chair 
with its back against the door, dropped into the 
seat and fixed his eyes, as if he would never 
remove them thence, upon the old armchair 
standing by the hearth. Sometimes he wept 
as he looked there ; then smiled, as if he would 
cheer c ome one that filled its seat ; and then a 
keen anguish, an imploring look — full of sharp- 
est desolation — shot into every feature, and 
blinded his eyes with grief. 

In this way he sat there for an hour or more, 



suffering with pangs that spake aloud in every 
line of his face, every muscle of his tortured 
old body — but immovable. He strained his 
eyes forward — " She is going — God heip us all 
— she is gone J" he cried, and broke from the 
chamber. He speeded swiftly into the hall ; 
unfastened the door — the old bar crumbled as 
he pulled it down — and was in the open air. 
Much as he was moved, his feet yet lingered 
about the place ; and while he wavered in his 
mind whether to stay or fly — standing and look- 
ing by turns back upon the house and out upon 
the road that stretched away into the country 
— his attention was fixed by a young figure that 
approached. It was a fair creature that he 
saw, not yet grown to the full age of care ; 
but, nevertheless, pale, travel-stained, and part- 
ly borne down by a burden (it was a plain 
willow basket) which she carried, and which 
she held close to her side. 

She was hurrying by when the old man ac- 
costed her. 

" Stop me not, for Heaven's sake, stop me 
not !" she cried, as Hobbleshank stood irv her 
way. " Life and death are in my steps. Death 
behind and death before me, and life only — a 
little lingering life — in such speed as I may 
make. I must be gone at once !" 

The old man stood, for a time, gazing at the 
pale young creature, and wondering what her 
meaning might be. Recovering from his sur- 
prise, he presently laid his hand in hers (which 
was cold as marble), and said : 

" Come in with me, you are sick and weary 
— that you can not deny — with long travel. 
You need rest, and may find a little here. I 
once had a good right to say to all comers, 
* Welcome here !' — that was many, many long 
dreary years ago — it was then a cheerful, mer- 
ry house ; and now, we who are both stricken 
in sorrow, have a privilege anywhere where 
darkness is, and dust, and lonely gloom. Come 
in and rest." 

As he spake, he drew her gently toward the 
house. She hesitated at first, and when she 
cast her eyes up at the old building, shuddered, 
and started back as if it had been a prison ; but 
when she turned and saw tears streaming in 
the old man's eyes — he had watched her with 
a sad constancy — she smiled sorrowfully, and 
at once entered in. 

Why did she pause as she paced that broad 
old hall ? What were those crumbling old 
walls, and those fading figures, painted to the 
ceiling, saying to her ? She looked about like 
one restored to a world she had known before, 
and could not tell where nor when. Wonder- 
ing more and more, and on the watch at every 
step, like one that looks for a surprise, she was 
led by Hobbleshank, whose steps seemed moved 
that way by a force he could not control, into 
the chamber where he had suffered so much. 
He would have closed the door behind them, 
to shut off the cold airs that dwelt about the 
hall. 

" In God's name !" cried his young compan- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



225 



ion, " do not shut this chamber up so tight, you 
will stifle me. I had rather suffer all the un- 
kindness of winter than see anything more of 
closed doors and darkened windows. I have 
seen enough already !" She looked uneasily 
about as she spake, sighed as in spite of her- 
self, and was silent. 

" You have had heavy troubles, for one so 
young," said the old man, " I know you have, 
for your eyes seem to be looking not at present 
objects, but on what is behind and far away !" 

" Don't speak of them now," she answered, 
drawing her breath short and fast ; " but go 
out and look back upon the road, whether any 
travellers are coming this way in great haste. 
There will be a dark, deadly carriage close be- 
hind them." 

Hobbleshank begged her to be seated, and 
went forth as she requested. He soon came back 
and answered that there were none to be seen. 

" I strained my gaze," said the old man, 
" the whole length of the road. Be comforted, 
there is no one in pursuit." 

" In pursuit !" she answered, lifting her eyes 
upon him with a broad look of surprise and 
wonder, " then you know that I have fled ; do 
you know from whom ?" 

" How could I fail to know ?" answered Hob- 
bleshank, whose heart softened toward the gen- 
tle questioner ; "you have fled from tyrants. 
I see no stripes upon your person ; you do not 
wear a prison-garb ; and yet I will swear that 
you are flying from the most cursed, cruel, re- 
lentless despotism, that could be laid on a 
young spirit like yours. Some one that may 
have spared your fair flesh, has been cutting 
your young heart to the quick — has been break- 
ing your beautiful hopes, one by one ; and you 
feel the sunshine and the free air to day, for 
the first time, perhaps, in many a long year. 
Give an old man credit for some spirit of sor- 
rowful judgment, and say I am right." 

Could the earnest truth with which Hobble- 
shank spake, out of the very bosom of a great 
inner world of sorrow in himself, fail to touch 
the other pale sufferer ? 

" I have had some troubles," she answered, 
feigning to smile. " But what of that ? I am 
only grown old a little before my time. I will 
try to forget what is past ; would God grant 
me strength to bear up against what is to 
come !" As she uttered this, a deadly paleness 
blanched her cheeks, and her eyes brightened 
into a vague splendor, that was almost fearful 
to look upon. 

The old man sat fixed in his seat, gazing up- 
on her; while there came floating into his 
mind, and assuming form and color, as he 
watched her haggard look, her features white 
as the tombstone marble, and her thin, trem- 
bling form, the memory of one just so troubled, 
shrunken, and sorrowful, that faded away from 
that old armchair a lifetime ago. 

Each lost in their own wandering and troub- 
led thoughts, they sat there dumb and silent as 
two images in a cold vault. 



" Do you dwell here ?" she said at length ; 
but seeing the dusty walls, from which the 
hangings tumbled piecemeal, and how dull cob- 
webs had engrossed the corners of the room, 
she added, " but I know you can not." 

" And yet I do," answered Hobbleshank, " in 
the spirit. My mind has lived in these cham- 
bers for many years ; but this poor old body 
drags itself along in yonder city. This house 
is mine, and yet not mine ; rather it belongs to 
a child of mine, whether in his grave or no, I 
can not tell." 

" Then he may be happy !" she said. " I have 
looked down into many graves, and used to 
think them dreary. But now I know there are 
graves on the earth gloomier than any dug in 
the soil. Why do I stay here, talking so, when 
I should be abroad on my journey? I would 
not have tarried — though I am glad for your 
sake and my own, now, that I did — had I not 
wished, most fervently wished, to cross the 
threshold of the city with some strength and 
spirit to meet my task. I must go." 

She rose, possessed herself of the willow bas- 
ket, which she had laid on the ground at her 
side, and took the old man by the hand. 

" I am sorry that you go," he said, looking 
kindly upon the gentle creature. " You know 
not what guests and fancies you leave me to. 
Can I go with you to the great city in no friend- 
ly service ?" 

" In none whatever, I fear," she answered.. 
" My task is a simple one, and asks only a 
kindly spirit to fill it well. I go to tend at the- 
bedside of a dear friend who is sick. I must 
hasten, or he may have bid the world goodby 
already. I think," she added, laying her pale 
white hand upon the basket, "I have some 
comfort here for him." 

" An old man's good wishes shall go with 
you every step ! Cheer up, and speed, then, 
if such be your errand : the city darkens apace, 
and I shall be alone again, as I have been, and 
shall be, Iioav long Heaven knows." 

He led her through the old broad hall ; she 
looked at the dim old figures with the same 
strange interest as before ; and in a moment 
they stood upon the door-step. 

" Remember," said Hobbleshank, " though 
we have met but once, we are old friends." 

She pressed his hand closely in her own, and 
proceeded on her way. Once forth upon the 
road again, she strained her eyes with painful 
earnestness toward the city, as if she could so 
call up, out of all the great and turbid mass, 
the little bedside she wished to see ; pausing 
only once or twice to look back at the old man, 
who at last fell within and closed the door. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE PALE TRAVELLER ENTERS THE CITY. 

She had not walked far, when a sudden turn 
brought her where the road plunged down with 



•226 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



a swift declivity at her feet. She stopped and 
trembled. Underneath her troubled eye lay the 
mighty metropolis, with its thousand chimneys, 
its blackened roofs, its solemn church-turrets 
and glittering vanes — spreading out wherever 
she gazed, and filling her mind with an inde- 
scribable awe. 

How dark, how cold and chill, seemed that 
multitude of houses to her ! They suggested 
to her no thoughts of neighborhood and fellow- 
ship by their closeness, but rather one of dumb 
creatures huddled together by sheer necessity, 
to shut off the shivering airs that beset them 
from the rivers on either side. When she 
looked for broad and cheerful ways, and found 
only narrow streets that yawned like chasms 
and abysses along the house-fronts ; when her 
eyes sought waving trees to gladden the air, 
in vain, her heart shrunk within her : it seemed 
to her a wilderness of dungeons, and nothing 
more. A dark, dismal mist, formed of dust, 
smoke, the reek of squalid streets, the breath 
of thousands and hundred thousands of human 
beings — crept, like a black surge, along the 
housetops. 

The hoarse murmur deepened as night drew 
on ; the moaning of one vexed with pain and 
confinement, of prisoners pining to be free. If 
the whole broad shadow of the city, cold and 
vast, had fallen on her spirit, it could not have 
chilled her more ; but when the thought came 
to her again of the sacred errand on which she 
was bound, her heart was renewed, her eye 
brightened, and, clasping her burden anew, she 
hurried on. And now the great city which she 
had wondered at, in its entirety and vastness, 
met her, part by part, and bewildered her with 
its countless details. There were country wag- 
ons hurrying out ; sulkeys, stanhopes, barouch- 
es, flying past as if desolation followed fast be- 
hind. Then great carts and trucks, loaded to 
the peak with heavy merchandise. All these 
she regarded with a wandering eye ; but when 
she caught sight of dark foundation-stones, 
still clinging to the earth, where an old peni- 
tentiary had been lately razed to the ground — 
she felt the uses it had served. 

Whenever she passed houses with closed 
shutters, she shuddered and quickened her 
pace ; to some there were barred windows — 
these she regarded with a sidelong glance of 
curiosity, as if she expected to see pale faces 
peering out between the irons. Once she 
passed an old stone building, with every case- 
ment from cellar to garret closely ironed ; it 
was only an old sugar-house, and she speeded 
past it as if it had been a jail. 

Full of vague fears, startled at every object 
that crossed her, suggestive in any the remotest 
degree of that she dreaded, and had good 
cause to dread the most — she hastened on. A 
green wagon, close and dark, passed her — the 
prison carriage, plying between the city prison 
and the island — and she felt it like a cloud as 
it hurried by. The very streets, murky as they 
were, seemed to close upon her in the distance, 



but opened again constantly as she advanced ; 
new houses, new sights and objects, springing, 
as from a perpetual womb, out of the cloudy 
haze that lowered in her way. As far as her 
eye could pierce, the roads were dark with 
vehicles of one sort and another, crossing and 
recrossing, rushing tumultuously in every di- 
rection ; some driven by boys, some by men ; 
some sitting under shelter ; others, the cartmen 
standing up in their professional frocks, with a 
firm hold upon the reins, darting rapidly from 
one side of the street to the other. Above the 
whole throng and procession, a great coach or 
stage at times towered up, over-topping the 

i street, and swarming to its very summit with 

I passengers. 

All along the way, people poured into the 
streets in uninterrupted succession, out of 
damp, dull rooms ; out of narrow alleys ; from 
work-shops ; from cellars ; from churches ; and 
the way was perpetually choked and glutted 
with the throng. What multitudes went past 
pent up in carriages — a pleasure to them, a 
hideous bondage it seemed to her ! 

She saw no one, not one, with gyves and 
irons on their limbs ; and yet, how care-worn, 
and bowed, and convict-like they all looked to 
her! 

She passed along, looking anxiously at dark 
doorways, at iron gates and steep areas, aud 
heavy churches oppressing the earth with their 
massive granite or marble ; smithies, where 
men were busy forging vast chains and cables ; 
shops, where great locks and bolts leaned in 
the windows. A long way after all these, she 
came upon a grim, ill-dressed, smoke-stained 
man, who bore in his hand a bunch of keys, 
which he grasped close and clashed together as 
he walked ; and she shrunk from him as if he 
had been the deadliest and fastest of all the 
jailer race. Gazing fearfully about in this 
way, she espied far off, through a side street, 
dimly seen moving through the dusk that grew 
every minute deeper, a hearse and funeral 
train — at that distance it seemed scarcely more 
than a shadow, and a cold shudder crept 
through her frame. What if it were her friend, 
her dear friend, whose burial she thus regard- 

| ed ? Her first impulse was to hasten after it ; 

j but ere she had taken many steps in this reso- 
lution, it had glided away, and she returned to 
the path she had been pursuing. Night now 
came swiftly on; the black shadows fell in 
broad masses in the streets ; the confusion, the 
hurry, the press of life in every direction 
deepened. 

She moved along as speedily as she could, 
consulting from time to time, at a window 
lamp, a chart she had borne in her hand all 
along. At intervals, as if by chance and no 
design, a public light broke out, sometimes in 
one quarter, sometimes in another, and glim- 
mered with a feeble ray. This only made the 
gloom deeper and drearier than before; and 
she kept, while she could, in the streets where 
the shop-windows blazed upon the pavement. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



227 



It was not easy for her, with all her care, 
her painful scrutiny of the paper she carried, 
and study of the signboards at the corners, to 
shape her course aright. There was a street- 
fight once ; then a crowd gathered at the door 
of a show ; then a poor woman who was doling 
forth, from the steps of a gentleman's domicil, 
a piteous tale of poverty and suffering. Once 
there was a hideous cry, a light rose high in 
the air, and she looked about and saw, more 
plainly than ever, how darkness had stretched 
his mighty arms abroad and held the city in 
his grasp. 

Not a whit fairer or freer did the houses 
show to her now at night, than when she first 
beheld them, and ever since ; they all seemed 
like graves, or tombs, or prison-fastnesses. 
Striking through thoroughfares that diverged 
from the main path she had been travelling, 
she was gradually approaching the point she 
sought. She passed a thoroughfare, little fre- 
quented, where the unfed lamps winked and 
blinked at each other across the street, like so 
many decayed ghosts. Then another, where 
all the lights had gone out. Then others ; un- 
til at length, by what she saw around, she felt 
that the object of her wish was near at hand. 

There was a square, so her chart informed 
her; here it was — a discolored yellow house ; 
here too — only it seemed more golden and 
precious than the description allowed; and 
there — yes, there, where her eyes were fixed, as 
on a star, shone a little light, just at the height 
she might have looked for. The house, the 
home, the shelter of her sick friend was found. 
The door stood open to receive and welcome 
her. She looked around ; the tall houses 
that guarded the square, growing blacker every 
minute, seemed frowning on her and gathering 
about her, closer and closer, as if they would 
shut her in : she glanced timidly up to them, as 
if they had been in truth cruel living creatures, 
and, trembling with fear and joy, fled into the 
house for shelter, like one pursued. 



CHAPTER XX. 



FOB AND HIS VISITER FROM THE COUNTRY. 

The stairs were steep and narrow ; and as she 
clambered up, a thousand visions thronged 
about her and crowded in her way. At one 
time she was oppressed with the gloomy thought 
that he might be dead and gone ; not to be 
found any more in that house, or any other of 
mortal habitation. Then all the great city, in 
the many dreadful and oppressive shapes it had 
taken in her mind, whirled past, filling the air 
with darkness, and confusion, and boundless j 
tumult. It wa s a gloomy way for a poor lone- 
ly woman to travel— that ill-arranged stairway 
— lighted only by the chance flickering of cheap 
candles, where the doors stood ajar ; or by 
whatever of the public light strayed in through | 



the entry windows. Every step brought her 
nearer to the chamber she sought ; and although 
there were many others under that same roof, 
children, and women, and aged men, dwelling 
in many apartments (for they were all poor, and 
poverty straitens itself to a narrow fold;, she 
seemed to know that chamber only, among 
them all. 

At length she stood at the door ; she knew 
it, even in the dark, as her hand passed over 
it ; she paused a moment, to gather strength 
and spirit. While she lingered in a deep con- 
flict of many emotions, she thought she heard 
j the murmur of gentle music within ; it was 
I fancy, only, associating with the place an in- 
cident that raised it out of its low estate. She 
entered ; there was the room, lighted by a sin- 
I gle candle, gleaming from the corner where it 
i stood, as cramped and narrow as ever ; the as- 
! paragus in bottles ; the chain of birds' egss 
[ against the wall; the pot of plants brought in 
i and stationed on the shelf; the blackbird in 
j his cage, removed from his old lookout at the 
j window and hung upon a beam inside ; and 
; underneath these, where his waking eye could 
command them all. lay the little tailor, poor, wan, 
•■ wasted with sickness, and slumbering from 
very want of strength. She looked upon him, 
scarcely believing it was he ; she looked upon 
the objects which carried her mind far away, 
and she knew it was, indeed, no other. She 
sank into a chair by the wall, and looked 
around. How strong was the sympathy of her 
fancy with the fancy of the sick man ! While 
she gazed upon them, the room broadened into 
wide meadows ; the asparagus-sprigs shot up 
into fair, green trees ; the birds' eggs, in the 
instant, swarmed with many beautiful and me- 
lodious lives ; and the single blackbird dark- 
ened the air as if he had been a whole flock in 
himself. There was more freedom to her in 
that little room, than in all the broad streets 
she had wandered through. 

Then she watched the sick man himself; so 
thin, so pale, he seemed to have come to her a 
long way out of the past, divested of all the 
clogs and shackles that had held him from her 
so long. He smiled ; by that she knew him 
again. It was meant, she was sure, for herself; 
and her heart lightened at the thought. Dwel- 
ling upon it, remembering how often such a 
look had brightened that pale face in old days, 
her thoughts were led by degrees to the basket 
she had laid down at her side. Unclasping it 
with trembline hands, she brought from its bo- 
som a slip of the wild-rose, which she carried 
gently and laid on the pillow by his brow, with 
the hope that it mi^ht suggest to !ii« dreams 
scenes dear to him as life. She wras right ; 
mindin? with his own willing thoughts, what 
his sense reported to bin rang up be- 

fore him a fantasy of other < ! 
life-like, so lively, that he smile I on it IS if ii 
had been reality. His lips moved, and mur- 
mured softly, as to a li-tmin ' Jided 
quickly forward, and bent down to catch What 



228 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



he uttered. She would have given the world 
had his words— she thought she knew what 
they would say — been audible. 

Presently the poor tailor wakened from his 
charmed slumber, sat up in his couch, and 
looked about. His eyes, which wandered as in 
search of something not present, no sooner fell 
on the pale visiter than they were fixed at 
once. So unreal they seemed to each other, 
and yet shadows of what both knew well, they 
sat gazing each into the other's eyes, without 
motion or utterance. 

" Martha," at last said Fob, whispering the 
name, in doubt whether he would be answered, 
or whether the vision would be dispelled, " Mar- 
tha Upland." 

She started up and rushed to his bedside. 

" I thank God for this \" she cried, casting 
herself upon his neck ; " I had not hoped to see 
you alive \" 

" You should scarcely think of the living," 
answered Fob, with an inexpressible anguish 
in his look ; " you who have been dead and 
buried three long years." 

" Little better than that," she observed, " or 
not so good. A close, silent bondage in one's fa- 
ther's house, with eyes, colder than the grave- 
worms, ever fixed on you ; all the motions of na- 
ture going on about you, so that you can hear the 
murmur and not share it ; on the same earth 
with friends you love, and yet sundered, in an 
everlasting parting from them, this is death. 
There can be no other, and no worse." 

" I could not, dear Martha — it was madness 
for me to dream that you would come, or could, 
when I sent for you. I was going to the grave 
you have prayed for so often ; and tarried only 
to shake hands and part." 

" It was only by long watching, and at last, 
by stealth, that your message came to my hand. 
Yesterday at daybreak, the cruel guards who 
have watched me so long, grew, for once, drow- 
sy with sleep ; I found access to an upper cham- 
ber; clambered to the roof; down upon the 
old outhouse (you remember it well), and at 
length leaped to the ground. In an hour, an 
hour sacred to you, I was on my journey, and 
now, foot- weary, as you may guess, but glad of 
heart, I am here." 

" Three years — what years — since the awful 
interdict that divided us was pronounced. It 
was folly that I, a poor, outcast, landless tailor, 
should lift my heart to you ; but, with God's 
blessing, what I then gave has prospered (I 
know it has) in your silent prison, as well as it 
would with all the summer's sun and the au- 
tumn's bounty shed upon it. Three years; 
and now I look upon what my eyes have wan- 
dered through the whole firmament in vain to 
behold. I have toiled, God knows, for this 
sight, and have failed till now." 

" I saw you once, dear Fob," she answered, 
returning his look of truthful fondness, " once 
only, and that was a year ago, yesterday, at 
dusk, gliding by the garden wall ; they seized 
you and dragged you away before my sight, and 



ever after, that window was closed. The morn- 
ing light, that came that way (they said) was 
too strong for my fading eyes." 

" For many long days," said Fob, " I was the 
ghost of that dwelling ; I haunted all the ways 
that led to it — sometimes in the orchard, some- 
times in the meadow, sometimes, as you saw, 
under the very eaves of the house itself. But 
to what purpose ? I had been driven, you know, 
by the iron hand that no man can resist, the 
relentless law, from fields that were mine ; and 
men followed in its scent, and yelled on my 
steps like so many hounds. I was buffeted, re- 
proached, driven off like a dog, till I came to 
curse the very house that held your enemies 
and mine. I have failed not, as you learned 
by what I wrote, to visit our old haunts, and 
to dream you back again to the life we once 
led in woods and meadows, and by the mar- 
gins of smiling streams. How has the time 
gone with you ?" he asked, in a choking voice, 
for he knew the answer too well. " You have 
had no free air for three weary years." 

" No breath whatever," she said, and a deep- 
er paleness struck through her features as she 
spoke, " closely housed, stealthily watched all 
that time; while the story has gone abroad 
that I was deadly sick, of a sickness so frail and 
delicate, that nearest friends could not see me 
without endangering life. A physician — a false, 
corrupt villain, as God ever made — came at 
studious intervals as if to my bedside, and went 
forth with a piteous sigh, shaking his head 
over the sad malady that could not be cured. 
So they thought. They deemed that disease of 
horrid bondage would never be conquered ; 
but, thanks to Heaven, thanks, never too many 
nor too devout, I am a free child of the air and 
the open light once more !" 

Even while she spake, swift, copious tears, 
gushed into her eyes ; she fell upon her knees, 
and, bowing her head upon the couch of her 
sick friend, felt that her heart was bursting 
with thoughts of past sufferance and present 
joy ! Could Fob behold this, and fail to be 
moved ? He looked upon her a moment ; a 
pang writhed his countenance, and clasping 
one of her pale hands in his, he wept like a 
child. The wild slip with which she had soothed 
his sleep, lay where all their tears fell upon it ; 
and if it had budded that moment, and shot forth 
there, in fair green leaves and brighter flowers 
than bush or tree ever bore, would it have 
been less than a true testimony to the beautiful 
and gentle spirit of the hour ? 

When they looked up again, the sorrow had 
passed from their brows, and they smiled on 
each other, with something like the gladness of 
a happier time. 

" I have brought down all of the old home- 
stead that I could," said Martha, who had her 
willow basket at the bedside ; " and it is here." 

She unclasped it ; and as Fob glanced down 
into its fragrant womb, his eyes shone with a 
new light. He saw whole tracts and acres 
there, 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



229 



" These, you know," continued Martha, pro- 
ducing a handful of green cresses, " I plucked 
them from the Mower's nook, in the wood, so 
calm and shady in the summer time. You re- 
member it ?" 

" I think I should," answered Fob, who could 
not fail to detect a ruddy tinge that crossed the 
questioner's countenance. " Had that nook a 
memory of its own, and could echo what it has 
heard, how many gentle stories it could tell : 
that you know as well as I." 

" Here is clover, too," said Martha, " you 
know that ?" 

" To be sure I do," answered Fob, quickly, 
" The sweet, red-blossomed clover, that grows 
by the great rock in the lane — you found it 
there, I know. Is the shadow of the old rock 
as broad and cheerful as ever ?" 

" You forget, my dear friend," she replied, 
" I have not seen its summer shadow for three 
long years. Boards and casements, thin and 
frail, have held me in faster than if I had been 
walled round with rocks as massy and cold as 
that." 

« What a fool I am !" said Fob, " I knew 
that well — but here — what is this ?" taking 
up a green plant that she had produced, and 
looking on his pale visiter in wonder, " you 
have not, truly, trusted yourself in the dark old 
hollow, always so full of midnight and gloomy 
thoughts to pluck this for me ?" 

" From no other place has it come !" answered 
Martha. " It was the first I sought after my 
escape. Dark, dreary, cheerless as you think 
it — though we have had many a pleasant ram- 
ble in its ways — it glared as with sunshine to my 
long darkened eye. The dismal pines that 
dwell on its sides, seemed to laugh in my ear, 
as the wind whispered with them ; the dark 
bats and ill-omened owls glanced about as glo- 
rious as eagles !" 

" Our gloomy old friend, the Hollow — you 
think so hardly of — see what he has yielded," 
said Martha, after a moment's pause, lifting 
in her hand a bunch of sparkling red berries, 
and waving them before the little tailor till 
they danced again, and shone brighter than his 
own pleased eyes. 

Then there were buttercups, gathered from 
the heart of a meadow, where they had often 
lingered together, gathering them before ; green 
rushes, from the brook ; feathers of the blue- 
bird, that had moulted where they were found. 
On each they dwelt, babbling over old memo- 
ries and associations like children ; and finding 
a solace and joy in those simple treasures, 
that the costliest banquet might have failed to 
yield. 

All the green and fanciful treasures she had 
brought, lay spread about him, and his eye 
gleamed with a tearful joy as it passed from 
one to the other. 

" I have something more here," said Mar- 
tha, dipping again into the basket, " something 
to please you for the sake of others and not 
yourself." 

15 



" I shall shed no tears, even if it be so," said 
Fob, smiling. " Let us see." 

She brought forth, from the very bottom of 
the basket, an old, tattered, patched-up parch- 
ment, and held it up exultingly before his eyes. 
He no sooner caught sight of it and learned 
what it was, than he clapped his hands and 
stretched them forth to pluck it gently from 
her. It was the deed, the very deed, rent in 
pieces so long ago — which he thought lost for 
ever, rescued to the light by bright eyes that 
had peered for it amid dust and tumbling frag- 
ments, because she knew it would pleasure 
him. Here was joy — joy for Puffer Hopkins ; 
joy for Hobbleshank ; and as he held it close 
to his eye, it seemed, as every good act and 
record should, to have a fragrance of all the 
sweet and fair things among which it had 
lurked in the basket of the fair fugitive. So 
they sat there many hours, in which Fob gath- 
ered new strength and spirit, talking over 
the recovery, past times, scenes, occasions — 
too sacred for a record. If unseen angels, as 
some have fondly deemed, watch in our cham- 
bers, linger at our bedsides, and bless us in act 
of doing well, how must they have swarmed in 
that little chamber, and through the holiest 
hours of night, held joyful watch over two spir- 
its so like themselves ! 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ISHMAEL SMALL MAKES A DISCOVERY. 

Angel-guarded as a generous faith would 
fain persuade us, were the little tailor and his 
country friend, within — an eye, by no means so 
kindly or auspicious in its gaze, watched all 
their doings from without. Perched in the 
very gutter of the Fork, clinging to the case- 
ment of the dormer window, as he best could, 
and holding his head obliquely — sat or couched 
— Ishmael Small. His turned-up nose against 
the window as close as he could press it, he 
kept a hungry look fastened on every glance, 
or gesture, or motion, that passed within. He 
could not catch their voices where he sat, but 
seemed to know all that passed as if he had 
heard it slowly uttered, word by word. When 
the deed was produced, could they have caught 
sight of that sharp gray eye, piercing through 
the very centre of the bull's-eye with which 
the cheap casement was glazed, they would 
have both shrunk back and said, "What uuly 
spirit is that — that glares like a sunglass upon 
us?" 

Up to that moment, Ishmael had looked calm- 
ly on; but when he saw the old shivering 
parchment brought forth, and clutched so greed- 
ily by the poor tailor, he gnashed his teeth, and, 
turning about, with a glance downward at a 
stout man in jolly health, who passed in the 
street below with a market-basket on his arm, 
as if it would afford him a most exquisite pleas- 



230 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



ure to topple himself down upon him, and crush 
all that manly vigor out of him — he crept up 
the roof, and espying a narrow rent— scarcely 
larger than his hand — where a single ray came 
through from the chamber, laid his ear close 
down, and, with his chalky visage turned to 
the sky, he held his breath, and listened to 
what passed. He was right. All the hours 
he had spent in tracking Hobbleshank from 
place to place ; all the vague rumors that had 
crept into his mind, as, from time to time, his 
acquaintance with Puffer Hopkins grew ; all 
his long vigils about the Fork (whose evil ge- 
nius, as night and day, but mostly by night, he 
hovered round it, he seemed) — all confirmed 
and made true. When this conviction shot 
through the brain of the deformed little eaves- 
dropper, his knees shook, his eyes dimmed for 
a moment, his grasp relaxed, and, had he not 
summoned at once with desperate force his 
ebbing strength, he would have rolled into the 
street. Recovering himself, he paused not a 
minute to listen — he knew enough and more 
than enough already — clambered the roof again 
— plunged into the open scuttle by which he 
had at first emerged — and dived — so swift was 
his descent of the narrow stairs, it seemed, from 
top 10 bottom, a single act — into the open air. 
Buttoning his coat close together — fixing his 
cap firmly on his head, and thrusting in his 
straggling pocket-handkerchief behind — so that 
not a single fluttering rag might check his 
course, he started off. Like lightning he sped 
along, bounding over obstacles; winding his 
way through crowds that crossed him ; and 
gliding between vehicles that seemed rushing 
together from opposite directions — in a fashion 
that was perfectly miraculous. 

It Wi s only a few minutes, and he stood at 
the broker's door. He slopped an instant to 
recover his breath, listening if he were astir ; 
then, thrusting his arm in at a concealed open- 
ing in the wall, he drew back the bolt and 
stepped in. Closing the door behind him, and 
cautiously crossing the room, he knocked at 
the broker's closet. 

" Hold back," cried the old man, in a sup- 
pressed voice, like one engaged in a desperate 
struggle, " what are you choking me for ? Take 
it back, take it all back ; but let me go. There, 
curse it, there — she glides by again. It was 
your own fault." 

Ishmael knocked again. 

" Let me go, or I'll beat you," shouted the 
old broker, who seemed to be vexed and goad- 
on by the sound, mingled, as it doubtless was, 
with the subjects of his dream. "What did 
you cross me for ? She is mine, I tell you, as 
much as yours, Hobbleshank ! Marry her, and 
I'll grind you to powder ; ha ! ha !" and he 
laughed, with a broad chuckle, in his dream. 
" That fixes you. Buy bread if you can ; a 
cord or two of wood ; I'm sorry the poor lady's 
so sickly. Take the boy away ; smother him, 
choke him, drown him ! ha ! ha !" 

« Wake up, wake up !" whispered Ishmael, 



whose spirits, to tell the truth, were not a little 
subdued by what the restless slumbers of the 
old broker seemed to point at. " I have news, 
great news for you !" 

" I know you have," continued Fyler, who 
seemed bent on pursuing his dreaming thoughts 
at all hazards. " That was well done, Jack 
Leycraft — excellent! the little fellow fainted 
away, did he ? — so fur that he wont come back 
again, I guess." 

And Mr. Fyler Close, wonder at it as the 
world may, such was the flow of his spirits, 
went off, chanting Old Hundred ; to be sure, in 
a somewhat dissonant and imperfectly devel- 
oped vocalization. This divertisment had the 
effect of restoring him to the familiar use of 
his organs, and availing himself of his ears, 
quite readily, he heard a quadruple rap, which 
Ishmael was now practising on the door ; and 
asked who was there. Ishmael made himself 
known, and the old man, sliding rapidly into 
his garments, unbarred his closet door, and 
stepped forth. 

" Well, what word, Ishmael ?" he asked, as 
soon as he was disinterred. 

" Come this way," said Mr. Small, taking 
the broker by the arm, and leading him toward 
the window. As they stood where the light 
fell from a neighboring chamber, in which 
watch was kept with one disordered in his rea- 
son, and whose cries could be heard where they 
stood, and Ishmael saw how haggard and with- 
ered was the broker's look, he doubted wheth- 
er to utter his news now that he was there. 
He paused awhile and looked at Fyler. 

" You heard nothing," he said, eying Ishm. 
el in turn. " Did I disturb you ? I was run- 
ning over a long sum in compound interest. I 
got the figures wrong, and that put me in a 
passion. You saw that ?" 

Ishmael professed to have seen nothing. 

" What's your news ?" asked Fyler. " Noth- 
ing terrible, I hope. Is it a thunderclap, or a 
burst of music ? — speak quick !" 

Before he answered, Mr. Small went to the 
door, thrust forth his head into the hall, and, 
opening wide both his ears, listened to catch 
any sound that might be stirring. The whole 
house was dead and still, and he returned. 

" A cross between the two," answered Ish- 
mael, subduing his voice, " they have found 
the deed." 

" What deed— Hobbleshank's ?" asked the 
old man, gasping for breath, and drawing Ish- 
mael close up to him by the collar, so that their 
faces almost touched. 

" The very same, sir," answered Ishmael, 
" yaller with age, and patched up like a old 
bed-quilt." 

If the blackest thundercloud hovering in th< 
sky had settled down that moment, and become 
part and parcel of the features of Fyler Close, 
they could not have scowled more darkly than 
they did. He let fall his hand from its hold 
on Ishmael Small ; and turning away, he paced 
the chamber ; at every turn, as he came near 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



231 



the light, glaring like a wild beast on Ishmael, out that the watchmen was on duty, and the 
and showing his teeth firmly set together, in lamps lit. Church steeples and tops o' public 
the extremity of his passion. , buildings, is spruce beer at twopence a glass, 

After travelling the apartment in this wild way j compared with it. Then there was a wery 
for twenty times or more, he suddenly stepped charming young 'oman, that brought the parch- 
aside, and leaping into his closet, bolted it with- j ment out of the country where she found it, 
in. Ishmael waited till the clock struck mid- 1 inside, sitting like a wax figure to be looked 
night, sitting on a broken chair, listening to ! at, and Fob, the little tailor, actin' like mad, 
the disordered sick man's cry from above ; but j kissing 'sparagus-sprigs and mock-oranges, like 
not a breath or sound denoted that any other i a hero, just for greens. I can't say I ever had 
living creature was in that chamber but him- a more agreeable night of it in my life, where 
self. The closet might have been the broker's there was only three of the party !" 
tomb, for all he heard. At the end of that time " Ishmael," said Fyler Close, withdrawing 
the closet-door was again opened ; Fyler Close . the attention of his companion from these de- 
came forth as if nothing unusual had passed, lightful prospects, " we must distrain in the 
and, bringing a chair, took his seat, calmly and Row to-morrow." 



pleasantly, directly opposite Mr. Small. 

" Where is John Leycraft, of late, Ishmael ?" 
asked Mr. Close, as though his mind was en- 



" Out and out ?" asked Ishmael. 
" Out and out," answered Mr. Close, " down 
to the plant-pots and Dutch oven. No non- 



tirely disengaged, and free to any general sub- sense, but a clean sweep ; here's the warrants 



ject that might come up. " He doesn't come 
here now-a-days. Have you kept track of 
him ?" 

" I have," answered Ishmael. " Last week 
he was busy in a cardin' mill ; week afore last 
he was journeyman to a stun-mason ; this week 
lie's a rope-walker ; where he'll be next week, 
and the week after, would puzzle a jury o' Sol- 
omons to guess. His mind's distempered, 
judging by what he says to me when I sees 
him, about that old business of the farm-house. 
He can't rest a day anywheres, but flies about 
like a singed pigeon over a conflagration, or a 
dove what's got sore feet." 

" Will he blab, Ishmael ?" answered Mr. 
wose, in a perfectly calm and dispassionate 
tone. " He's got a first-rate memory, and 
might turn it to account with the magistrates. 
Don't you think so, eh ?" 

" By no manner o' means," rejoined Mr. Small. 
" It's his own mind that unrests him and keeps 
him wake o' nights. He wants to find the boy, 
and clear his conscience with the yolk of the 
egg ; that's all." 

" If he's got an eye that can look through 
the crust of the earth, six feet or more, perhaps 
he'll find him, perhaps he won't," said the bro- 
ker, smiling on his companion, and twisting his 
shrubby whiskers in his fingers. " So you've 
seen the deed ?" he added, as if that had just 
occurred to him. " You couldn't borrow it for 
me to look at for a few minutes, eh ? Was it 
in good preservation, in a fine state of health?" 

" Capital," answered Ishmael, " considerin' 
it hadn't a sound square inch on its body, and 
was a little bilious in the face : if there had 
been a hole two inches bigger in the roof, I'd 
have brought it round for a interview." Where- 
upon, Mr. Small indulged in a gentle laugh; 
but not so as to disturb the neighborhood. 

" Where, in the name of Heaven, have you 
been to-night?" continued Mr. Close, "run- 
ning about citizens' roofs, like a cat?" 

¥ To be sure I have," answered Mr. Small ; 
" and a wery agreeable time I've had of it I 
can tell you; overscein' the city, and lookin' 



Go down to Meagrim, at the very earliest hour 
in the morning." And he handed Ishmael a 
bundle of documents filled up and ready for 
use. 

" No delay ?" asked Ishmael. 

" Not a minute ; and tell Meagrim to move 
the goods off, sell at the shortest notice, close 
up at once, and bring me the result in gold. 
He must throw off interest on his commissions : 
mention that to him when you see him to-mor- 
row." 

Ishmael promised it should be looked to the 
very hour the court opened ; and was about to 
leave. 

" You'll stand by me, Ishmael ?" asked Fy- 
ler, regarding him with a look that Ishmael did 
not recollect to have seen him ever wear be- 
fore. " You'll stick to me through all ?" 

"I will, Uncle Fyler," answered Ishmael, 
taking the old broker's proffered hand. * " I'll 
be a stren'thin' plaster to your back ; a pair o 5 
double magnifiers to your eyes ; and a patent 
truss to your hip-jints. Losin' the use of your 
legs, I'll be crutches to you; and when you 
come to give up the ghost" — 

"As to that last particular," interposed Fy- 
ler Close, " suppose we adjourn conversation 
twenty-five years. Th?„t isn't too long ? But 
when it does happen, as I suppose it must one 
day, I'll leave you an old chest or two to rum- 
mage, that's all I can, you know; and if you 
find anything it shall be yours." 

Mr. Small shook hands upon the understand- 
ing, and was moving off again. 

" Come this way, Ishmael," said the broker, 
as Mr. Small was at the door. " Listen !" 

At that moment, a fearful cry issued from 
the chamber where the disordered man lodged ; 
voices in supplication or menace were raised 
Upon him 5 and presently a dead silence fol- 
lowed, as if the struggler had been finally sub- 
dued. 

"There's close quarters up there," said Fy- 
ler, looking first at Ishmael, then lifting his 
meager finger, and shaking it in the direc- 
tion whence these sounds had come. " Stout 



232 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



chaps, brawny fellows ; and not a word uttered 
by the poor sick devil that's believed." He 
dropped his voice to the lowest whisper, and 
added, " I'll drive Hobbleshank to that pass 
yet !" Ishmael renewing his promise to exe- 
cute his orders promptly, on the morrow, and 
smiling in. answer to the hideous grin that 
lighted the old broker's countenance, with- 
drew. 

The broker himself sat by the window, listen- 
ing to the cries of the lunatic, and waiting for 
the break of day that he might hear the black- 
smith's mortgaged hammer sound, and fix his 
eyes once more on the securities spread about 
him. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

MR. FYLER CLOSE INVOKES THE AID OF MR. MEA- 
GRIM AND THE LAW. 

Pursuant to his engagement with the bro- 
ker, Ishmael at the proper hour, having first laid 
aside his cap, and substituted in its place a 
round-rimmed hat, embellished with a strip of 
crape — set forth to carry the wishes of Mr. 
Fyler Close into effect. Getting by an easy 
road into Chatham street, which was his favor- 
ite promenade, he pursued his course, not quite 
so gaily as usual, but with sufficient exuberance 
of spirits to indulge in an occasional sportive 
sally, as he pushed his way along the crowded 
street. Once feigning to be taking a leisurely 
walk, a mere after-breakfast stroll, with his 
hands crossed quietly behind him, he suddenly 
brought one of them forth, and letting it drop 
gently on the crown of an errand-boy, fresh 
from the country, and who was gaping and 
staring at the various street sights — he left the 
young gentlemen ssaggering about as if under 
the influence of a sturdy morning draught. 
This, and a few others like it, were, however, 
mere prefaces and flourishes of his humor ; but 
when he got to the declivity of the street, where 
it forms a cheerful perspective of mouldy gar- 
ments and black-whiskered Jews, Mr. Small 
knew that he was in a province that his genius 
had made his own. He slackened his pace a 
little, as he began to climb the street ; and 
keeping his eye fixed on its other extremity, 
waited a moment till he espied certain figures 
turning into it out of another thoroughfare ; 
his eye kindled, and smiling, and touching his 
hat gracefully to the young gentlemen who stood 
in the shop-doors, many of whom were his par- 
ticular friends, he strolled on. It was alms- 
house morning, Wednesday, when the public 
charities are distributed at the park office to 
the poor; and as Ishmael rambled on, he met the 
various creatures of the city bounty hobbling 
forward in every variety of gait, aspect, and 
apparel, and bearing their alms in every kind 
of characteristic utensil and implement ; poor 
women bringing theirs in broken baskets, con- 
cealed with woman's shrinking care, under old, 



tattered cloaks ; and the men bearing theirs 
openly on their backs, or tied in soiled cotton 
handkerchiefs. 

As he approached these parties, Ishmael as- 
sumed a benevolent aspect, and proceeded to 
put in practice the philanthropic purpose with 
which he was inspired. The first that he en- 
countered was a glazier carrying his arms in 
an old glazier's box : drawing near, Mr. Small 
accosted him with " Stop a moment, my friend 
— don't trouble yourself to set it down ;" lift- 
ing the lid and depositing within what seemed 
a liberal donation in money — " There ; go home 
as fast as you can, and invest that little deposite 
in a couple of tender steaks and two twisted 
rolls : you're hungry and they'll do you good !'* 
Ishmael passed on to another (amid the smiles 
of his acquaintance in the shops, who seemed 
to admit it was well done), who might have 
been a great traveller in his time, for he sus- 
tained his burden in a faded carpet-bag, slung 
from his shoulder at the end of a walking-staff. 
Ishmael begged to know what was his favorite 
dish, which the beggar modestly declining to 
answer, Mr. Small said, " I know what it is — 
it's turkey done brown, with sauce of oysters ; 
here's a couple of quarters," — placing in his 
hand the apparent coin, — " and there's a extra 
twenty-five center to treat yourself to the pit o' 
the the-a-tre after dinner." And Ishmael drew 
another from a pocket, the issues of which 
seemed to be as free and unlimited as those of 
any modern bank. 

Mr. Small claimed to be no banker or finan- 
cier, but he had certainly managed to create a 
currency which diffused a pleasure and satis- 
faction wherever it flowed. Was it any fault 
of his if his pensioners should afterward chance 
to wake from a delusion, and find that what 
they took for a legal mintage, was nothing 
more than a fictitious currency of electioneer- 
ing silver, bearing on one side the device of 
an attractive donkey, with his mouth full of 
political labels, and on the reverse that of a 
man in a cage, starving in consequence of the 
times brought upon the country by the party 
against whom it was aimed ? The silver was 
a purchase of Ishmael's from one of the church- 
es — to whose plate it had been contributed by 
certain liberal-minded politicians, who were 
pew-holders therein. 

Spreading his largesses in this way on every 
side, with the unqualified approbation of his 
Jewish friends, and maintaining for the time 
at least the character of a large-souled philan- 
thropist, Ishmael reached the court, with more 
sincere good wishes and blessings sent after 
him, than ever, in all probability, accompanied 
a traveller in that direction before. 

A rarer or more curious gathering of mortal 
creatures than compose the posse of officers, 
marshals, and litigants, that haunt the Small 
court — the Twenty Pound jurisdiction, it has 
been no man's fortune to see. In the first 
place, the Small court is held in a square room 
of very limited dimensions — where the court 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



233 



itself in triple majesty sits — with its puilieus 
in the rear of the city park ; the purlieus con- 
sisting in part of another square room, where a 
very red-nosed man roams about inside of a 
railed cage, opening great ledgers and closing 
them, and holding no other intercourse with 
the barbarous world without, than to accept 
from time to time small tributes of coin, which 
he carefully deposites in a yawning drawer, 
wide and deep enough to swallow all that may 
be cast in. 

A further purlieu of the Small court adjoins 
this sacred precinct, and consists of two small 
dens to which the worshipful judges withdraw, 
at certain seasons of the day, and brood over the 
wickedness and corruption of mankind; which 
they avenge by giving wrong-headed verdicts 
against parties who venture to molest them in 
their retirement. Through these various pur- 
lieus and avenues, there circulates from ten, 
morning, till three, afternoon, a constant tide 
of unclean, unwashed, and wrathful humanity, 
in at one door, out at another, making noisy 
friths and creeks, as it were, all over the place, 
and whirling round and round in a perpetual 
vortex. The tide was not quite at its height 
when Ishmael entered; and the retainers of 
the court who had assembled were therefore 
not too many to be observed apart. It was 
the clerk's room that Ishmael entered — where 
the officers and others are in waiting till they 
are called — or transacting such business as 
may be put in their charge. 

There was one man sitting in a corner, stout- 
built and heavy, with a great red nose — even 
much larger and fierier than the clerk's — that 
seemed to throw a glow over the newspaper 
he held before him, and which he was reading 
through a pair of coarse horn spectacles : while 
a spare man of a pale aspect was hobbling 
across the court-room on unequal legs, bearing 
a process to the clerk's desk within the rail. 
Another ruby-nosed officer, much taller, but 
not as stout as the other, was sitting in the 
doorway, looking out steadily, and with as 
much keenness as his brandy-stained face would 
permit, for the approach of one of their high 
mightinesses and supreme disposers of Twenty 
Pound cases — the justice himself. There was 
a constable with one eye gone, but concentra- 
ting in the other sufficient spite and small 
malice to light up the organs of four-and-twenty 
rattlesnakes or more : and another, a huge, 
overgrown man, in a dirty gray coat, with a 
great wen on his forehead, who sat upon a stool 
at a high desk, leaning over a paper and painfully 
casting up the interest on a very small sum for 
a very short time, and due and accruing from 
a retail grocer, both stout and small ; and fur- 
thermore, at this time, sadly invalid from want 
of funds. 

Presently there was a bustle at the door ; 
a great rapping on a desk in front of the bench, 
on the part of an impudent-looking man, who 
directed his eyes steadfastly toward tin- door h 
he knocked ; a tumultuous shout of " hats oil'" 



from all quarters of the room, a rush from the 
side rooms to the door of that where the chief 
court was held, and along came a little weazen- 
faced, crop-haired gentleman, shuffling through 
the press, and making his way toward the 
judge's seat, into which he presently dropped ; 
and after wriggling about uncomfortably for a 
few minutes, as if he had got into the prisoner's 
dock by mistake, and was on trial for non- 
compos or something corresponding, he called 
to the crier, over the desk-rail, for the day's 
calendar. 

Recovering a little, as he became better ac- 
customed to his station, he began shortly to call 
order, and in very doubtful English required 
people to " make less noise" in the outskirts 
of the court-room, where a great hubbub was 
rapidly engendering, to which the offenders 
listened with the most profound respect, while 
it was uttering, but as soon as his voice had 
fairly ceased, proceeded with renewed anima- 
tion, and as if it had been the purpose of his 
honor to cheer them on and encourage them in 
what they were about. 

Immediately in the heels of the judge — he 
had walked down with that functionary, that 
he might enjoy an opportunity to color his 
mind to the right complexion for a case that was 
coming on that morning — a marble-faced man 
came in, dressed in clean black from crown to 
toe, with a pair of vicious black eyes, and a 
chattering smile as he entered. This was Mr. 
Meagrim, the marshal ; and glancing about to 
recognise his customers and acquaintance, he 
glided out of the court-room into the clerk's 
purlieu, where Ishmael waited his coming. 

" Ah ! Mr. Small," he said, recognising that 
gentleman where he stood, in a corner, talking 
with one of the brandy-painted constables, 
" what is it, now ?" And he drew Ishmael 
aside, and dropping his voice to a stealthy 
whisper, inquired what he needed. They whis 
pered apart for a short time ; and Mr. Mea- 
grim, gliding away again, promised to return 
in a minute, as soon as he had seen the oath 
sworn against a brass-founder defendant, that 
he mi^ht levy on his cart and harness as they 
passed along. 

When Mr. Meagrim had left, the brandy- 
stained gentleman returned, and renewed the 
discourse the marshal had interrupted. 

" What did you say this crape was for, Ish ?" 
asked the constable, glancing at Mr. Small's 
round-rimmed beaver. 

" That crape," answered Ishmael, " is a sign 
o' mournin' and lamentation for the juryman 
that was killed in the box last week, by Coun- 
sellor Boerum's speech, which was slow in its 
operations, you know, but sure. Where's your 
weeper, and Crany's and Jimmerson's ! Why 
han't all the officers got their weepers on r" 

" There's no occasion that I can see," an- 
swered the constable ; "nobody's lost an\ re- 
lations here that I know on, this week j has 
there ?" 

" Hallo !— what are you drcamin' about,'* 



234 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



cried Ishmael, in well-feigned surprise, "I 
thought your judges was all dead. I understood 
this court — and who'll deny it I wonder — was 
under the jurisdiction of judges' ghosts — not 
live judges — but judges in a state of semi- 
anymation and imperfect witality !" 

By the time the subdued laughter which pre- 
vailed among the officers on the occasion of the 
ingenious observation of Mr. Small had sub- 
sided, Mr. Meagrim returned, quietly inter- 
changed a word or two with the clerk, ordered 
Messrs. Crany and Jimmerson to follow, and 
set forth in company with Ishmael. 

When they got into the street, Ishmael and 
the marshal led the way, and Messrs. Crany 
and Jimmerson, who were a pair of ill-matched 
constables, greatly dilapidated by use and age, 
trotted after. Presently Mr. Small, suggesting 
to Mr. Meagrim, that he had a slight commis- 
sion to execute by the way, dropped behind, 
with a promise to overtake them in the course 
of a block or two. Soon after, and when his 
companions were well out of sight, he began 
to cast about, with an impatient and ominous 
look ; and in a moment, hastening to a spot on 
which his eye had rested with unbounded satis- 
faction, he stood at a baker's window ; a min- 
ute after he was in the baker's shop — and, al- 
lowing him a minute more, and he was stroll- 
ing forth, holding in his hand a delicate amal- 
gam, formed of a slice of fresh bread and a 
slice of pound-cake laid close together. 

"The wickedness and desperation of the 
world is such," said Ishmael, as he cut into 
the amalgam, " that it exhausts one's inge- 
nuity and wits to make it go down. It's not 
bad, however," and he cut again, " if one could 
only wet it with a drink of pure gin, without 
being put to the vulgarity of payin' for it !" 

Now it is pretty generally known that there 
is a body of thirty-four gentlemen, recognised 
and described as the corporation of the city 
and county of New York, whose sole business 
it is, according to popular belief, to sit as a 
board of brewers ; and whose constant employ- 
ment it likewise is, for which they are chosen 
by the people at large and held in great honor 
therefor, to brew and distil a well-known pop- 
ular beverage, which has gone into extensive 
use. Ishmael, faithful to the promise he had 
made to himself, paused at one of the public 
stills, where this drink is distributed, and lift- 
ing a long wooden arm in the air, bending his 
head forward and drawing the wooden arm 
after him, with a good deal of dexterity and 
manual skill, took a large, copious, and ex- 
hilarating draught of the beverage in question. 
He then gracefully wiped his mouth ; and re- 
storing his handkerchief to his pocket, leaving 
a small segment only exposed for the public 
admiration, he followed on. 

Hurrying along, now that he was thoroughly 
refreshed, Ishmael reached Mr. Meagrim at the 
square, where he was busy bargaining for the 
services of a cartman, who being at last re- 
tained, galloped forward up the street, while 



i Mr. Meagrim and his followers, keepiiig him 
in view, swept on. 

When they reached the neighborhood of 
Close's row, Mr. Meagrim ordered the cart to 
halt without, and entering slyly with his train, 
took but a moment's glance at the building, 
and fell to business. 

Ishmael was despatched to the roof, with a 
handful of nails and an upholsterer's hammer, 
produced from the marshal's pocket ; Mr. Jim- 
merson to the lightning maker's garret ; and 
Mr. Meagrim himself, with the cartman and 
Mr. Crany in his train, proceeded to the recu- 
sant cobbler's. Such was the nimbleness and 
dexterity with which Mr. Small executed his 
portion of the business, that by the time Mea- 
grim and his followers reached the garret, they 
found the cobbler knocking his head and fists, 
like a madman, against the closed scuttle, and 
threatening to pitch his besieger from the roof, 
if he could once get out. When he found him- 
self hemmed in by other tormentors, in the per- 
sons of the officers and posse, his rage was 
greatly increased, and he danced about the 
apartment in an extempore hornpipe, more like 
a Huron chief than a franchise citizen. Not- 
withstanding he saw that he was overpowered, 
when the officers seized one end of his corded 
bale of valuables, he fastened on the other, 
and tugged at it, till they had fairly dragged it 
down stairs, the cobbler asseverating that mar- 
shals and all such cattle were a nuisance in a 
civilized community ; demanding to know what 
right they had to touch his property, and point- 
edly aspersing the legislature for presuming to 
pass such laws. 

Sweeping everything in in their course, chairs, 
tables, stair-rods, Dutch-oven — they descended 
into the precinct of the bereaved mother ; the 
cobbler shouting lustily after them all the way. 

Here their proceedings were quite as sum- 
mary — although they were impeded not a little 
by the levity of Mr. Crany, who clapped his 
hands upon his knees, and, bending almost 
double, burst into a horse-laugh, every time 
his eye fell upon the wooden quadruped and 
crape-dressed vase on the mantel ; for which 
extravaganee he was sharply rebuked by Mr. 
Meagrim, who told him he'd better stick to 
business ; while the cartman, who seemed to 
have a woman's soul under his cart-frock, priv- 
ily thrust what was equivalent to his whole 
day's wages in the mother's hand. 

In the meantime, Mr. Jimmerson, pursuant 
to order, had proceeded to the lightning-ma- 
ker's quarters, but coming in at an unlucky 
moment, when the artist was in one of his ab- 
sent moods, he had scarcely had time to disclose 
his business, when, by some cursed mischance, 
a large bottle slipped off, and striking him in a 
most sensitive part of his person, he was un- 
ceremoniously thrown on his back. There he 
lay, agitating his hands and feet, like a great 
j green turtle in a spasm, until the iightning-ma- 
I ker, who was up to his elbows in a vile yellow 
i mixture, rushed toward him, and, expressing a 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



235 



profound regret for what had occurred, began 
chafing his temples, beating his hands, and 
punching his body. 

The lightning-maker was bending over Mr. 
Jimmerson, when Mr. Small — who had lingered 
on the roof, watching a market-sloop that was 
sailing down the river — came down, and add- 
ing his own endeavors to the artist's, the con- 
stable was soon put upon his legs, and they 
proceeded in their business. Acting in the 
self-same spirit with the others, Ishmael and 
his aid cleared the house, down to the very cel- 
lar-floor, of all that came, by the most liberal 
construction, under their warrant. Two wide 
gales that led into the yard were thrown open ; 
the cart driven in ; the goods piled on in a 
threatening pyramid ; and perching on the very 
top, whither he had climbed, with saucepans, 
broken candle-stands, and rugged tables, for the 
steps of his arduous ascent, sat Mr. Ishmael 
Small, presiding over the whole, like the very 
genius of distress-warrants and chaotic chat- 
tels. Men, women, and children — the tenants 
of the row — gathered in the windows, looking j 
upon the wreck, pale-cheeked and hollow-eyed ; i 
the cobbler alone, holding his station in a door- 
way, and manfully vociferating against the in- 
iquity of the whole proceeding. 

The cart was driven off; Messrs. Crany and 
Jimmerson — the last with a dolefully bilious 
complexion — trotting along, and keeping watch 
on either side ; and Mr. Meagrim, smooth- 
browed and unruffled, following with a hawk's 
eye in the rear. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PUFFER HOPKINS INQUIRES AGAIN AFTER 
HOBBLESHANK. 

Day had scarcely dawned when Puffer was 
called up into the chamber of the little tailor. 
As he entered, in quick answer to the summons, i 
dreading some fatal crisis in his disease, Mar- ! 
tha was at the bedside, dwelling upon the coun- 
tenance of Fob with a fixed earnestness, watch- 
ing every look and turn, and ministering to his 
wish before it was uttered ; and Puffer, who 
knew that Fob had had the whole house, in 
every one of its chambers, for a nurse, and yet 
none so gentle as this one, wondered whence 
she came, and turned toward the little tailor, 
with a question in his look. Fob, busy with 
other thoughts, held spread out before him, as 
wide as his thin, feeble arms would allow, the 
old parchment, on which his eyes — wide apart, 
too — were steadfastly fastened. He greeted 
Puffer as he drew nearer to his couch, and re- 
quested him, with a knowing smile, to stand 
off. 

" You shan't come so near !" said Fob, still 
with a grave smile, " I can't allow it. There 
— stand where you are and tell me what you 
see ?" 



Puffer, who had been driven back by Fob's 
urgency, to almost the other wall of the cham- 
ber, confessed that, with the doubtful light, 
he could see nothing worth mentioning. 

" Well, well," pursued Fob, rising upon his 
elbows in his bed, and shifting the position of 
the parchment so that it fronted the window, 
" I must allow you a sunbeam or two ; what 
do you see now ?" 

Still Puffer averred nothing. Then Fob 
permitted him to come a foot or two nearer, 
still without effect ; and at last, in a sort of 
pleased impatience, he threw the deed toward 
him, and told him to read for himself. 

" He wants to show off his scholarship, Mar- 
tha, that's all," said Fob, who stretched his 
neck forward and watched the countenance of 
Puffer. A glance had sufficed to show him all. 
There it was written, in a good bold hand, 
Hobbleshank ; and there was the clause, 
word for word as Fob had recited it, touching 
his child, and showing, clearly enough, the ten- 
ure by which he held his right. And now 
something of the old man's hopes began to 
break upon him ; as his mind ran back, with 
inconceivable swiftness, he found he held the 
key by which to interpret his sad snatches 
of talk; his wild, melancholy cry that all was 
lost; and then returned upon him, too, the 
pledge he had proffered to his aged friends. 
He clasped the little tailor in an earnest grasp ; 
thanked him that he had borne in mind his poor 
wish that he might do a service to the kind old 
man ; and, returning the deed again to Fob, 
for present custody, he set forth in a renewed 
search after Hobbleshank. There was not a 
spot nor place where he had but heard the name 
of Hobbleshank mentioned that he did not visit. 
Till noonday he was busy going about from one 
place to another, following out an imperfect 
clew — when having learned that the old man 
had been a constant lounger upon the wharves, 
spending whole days in looking up and down 
the river (with what purpose nobody could ever 
guess), Puffer spent several hours more, in go- 
ing from pier to pier, watching the sloops and 
other river craft as they arrived, with the hope 
that he might have wandered away into the 
country and would choose this path back. Then 
he crossed the city to the piehouse, where they 
had passed their first night together. Being told 
that he never came there till toward dusk, he 
waited about, questioning every one that en- 
tered; but dusk and broad eight, even, failed 
to bring the one he sought. He then aimed 
for Barrell's oyster-house — he had reserved 
this, with a strong hope, for the last. When 
he had reached the oyster-house his heart smote 
him — the cellar-doors were closed and a faint 
light streamed upon the walk and up into the 
fiues of passers-by from the glass bull's-eye in 
the door. It might be shut lor the night. He 
knocked; no answer was returned; knocked 

again, and the glass eye grew dull; he bent 
down and whispered his name; the eye bright- 
ened at once, and he was admitted. Politician 



236 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



as he was, he was compelled to stop and stand 
stone-still on the steps, in wonder and amaze- 
ment at what he saw. 

The little stalls about the place, used to hold 
one customer with difficulty — and not that, if he 
grew too fast and stout upon the choice shell- 
fish of Mr. Jarve Barrell — now swarmed with 
damp, dripping faces, as thickly set as dewy 
cauliflowers on a wall ; the fire was out, and 
the rear of the cellar shorn of its benches and 
small square tables, had passed through a re- 
markable transformation; the chief circum- 
stance of which was, that Mr. Nicholas Finch, 
the indefatigable agent, was seated on a stool, 
his legs spread apart, and between his legs, so 
spread apart, the head of a kneeling gentleman, 
of scant apparel, bent down. Upon the head, 
Mr. Finch was most industriously employed, 
in spite of the remonstrances, entreaties, and 
contortions of the catechumen. Lounging 
against the end of the oyster-stand, picking off 
oysters from a plate with a delicate touch, and 
surveying this proceeding from time to time, as 
his leisure permitted, stood a young gentleman 
chastely apparelled in white jean pants of a 
fashionable cut, an elegant blue coat, and 
bushy whiskers. 

" Hallo !" cried the oyster-eater, at an un- 
usual spasm on the part of Mr. Finch's gen- 
tleman, " you're a purty feller, ar'n't you, for 
a feller-citizin — when you know towels and 
soap is the price of freedom — blow me tight 
if it a'nt, Nick." The oyster-eater had small 
eyes and stout chaps, and he smiled, with an 
oyster on his fork, as he uttered these words. 
Mr. Finch was silent, but plied his arms with 
wonderful diligence. 

" I'll take another, Mr. Codwise," said Mr. 
Finch, looking up. The kneeling gentleman 
jumped to his feet, rubbed his eyes, and walk- 
ing off to a corner of the cellar, took his seat 
on a bench, the second in a row. The oyster - 
eater laid down his fork, picked his way nicely 
to one of the stalls, and taking one of the rag- 
ged tenants daintily by the collar, led him out 
upon the floor ; and, giving him an energetic 
impulse with his foot, directed him to Mr. 
Finch. Upon this gentleman Mr. Finch fell 
to work in like manner ; and the owner of the 
blue coat and bushy whiskers resumed his oys- 
ters. This was certainly a lively subject ; his 
outcries were much louder and his writhings 
more frequent, and the raptures of Mr. Cod- 
wise proportion ably heightened; so much so, 
that he at last left off his oysters entirely, to 
watch the spectacle, and smiled so earnestly 
that the tears came into his eyes. 

" Bear your sufferin's like a man and a gen- 
tleman," said Mr. Codwise, whose delivery was 
somewhat imperfect, but in a tone of patron- 
izing encouragement. "Split my vest, but 
don't be cast down because the fibre's coarse. 
Oh, it's a glorious privilege, an't it, Mr. Finch, 
to enjoy the right of votin' an independent 
ticket ?" The consolation administered by 



Mr. Codwise was not quite satisfactory, for 
Mr. Finch's patient writhed again at a fresh 
application, down to his very extremities. At 
this moment a plunge was heard beyond, from 
behind a faded curtain, stretched across the 
rear of the apartment, and through which a 
dull light glimmered and painted upon it shad- 
owy figures moving within. A voice remon- 
strated — a voice, Mr. Jarve Barrell's, by the 
accent, responded, and a second plunge. What 
could this mean ? Could it be that Puffer Hop- 
kins had got into a branch penitentiary, estab- 
lished under-ground, where new tortures and 
fresh-devised penalties were inflicted on the 
criminal ? 

When he looked at the men about him, there 
was certainly something in their gait to war- 
rant the belief; and when he saw the secrecy 
with which the rites of the place were per- 
formed, he might have been easily assured that 
these men had been guilty of offences against 
God and man that drew upon them the dun- 
geon and the rack, which Mr. Finch and Mr. 
Barrell seemed to be administering. There 
was a smell of the prison in their garments, 
and something of the dull fixedness of prison- 
walls in their look. 

There seemed, at this juncture, to be a strug- 
gle behind the red curtain. " Don't drown me, 
for Heaven's sake, don't drown me !" cried the 
first voice again, in a tone of earnest entreaty. 

"Dip your head under, you rascal," cried 
the voice of Jarve Barrell. " Dip your head 
under, you burglary knave !" 

" Petty larceny, sir," whined the other voice, 
which savored strongly of thin soup and damp 
lodgings. 

" Don't spare the villain !" shouted Mr. 
Codwise, who had mounted a stool, and with a 
light in his right hand held high above his 
head, was peering over the curtain, " it's bur- 
glary, I saw it on the keeper's books ; it's so 
on my list. Don't spare him, it's good for his 
system, an't it, Mr. Barrell ? He broke into a 
respectable house in Fourteenth street, and 
stole a bottle of Muscat wine and a plate of 
anchovies. I'll make a patriot of you, you 
villain, don't you want to serve your country, 
eh ! Tell us that, will you ?" 

And so it was kept up ; Mr. Finch dumb and 
devoted, heart and soul to the performance of 
his share of the service ; Mr. Barrel] coaxing 
and clamoring from behind the curtain, with 
the resisters of his authority ; and Mr. Cod- 
wise dividing his time in equal proportions be- 
tween the oysters, the leading out of the men 
from the stalls, baiting Mr. Finch's patients 
from where he stood, and bantering Mr. Bar- 
rell's from over the top of the curtain. At 
length the noise ceased from behind the cur- 
tain, and Mr. Barrell came stumping forth; 
Mr. Finch dismissed his last patient from un- 
der his hand ; Mr. Codwise's last oyster had 
disappeared. The benches were full ; and 
there they sat, all in a row, in their sleeves, 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



237 



their faces of a bright red, brought on by the 
spirited exertions of Mr Finch, and their hair 
flying all abroad. 

Puii'er inquired what, all this meant. What 
did it mean ? He didn't want respectable 
voters — freemen, freshly delivered from bon- 
dage, voting an independent, patriotic ticket — 
coming up to the polls in dirty faces — did he ? 
He'd like to have 'em show a clean counte- 
nance among their fellow citizens — wouldn't 
he ? What was better for 'em than baths and 
towels ? This was Mr. Barrell's explanation, 
and it agreed well enough with a rumor which 
had prevailed that prisoners were to be brought 
down from the island to vote at the coming 
election. 

At the head of the row there was an old 
window, which, being greatly battered and 
damaged by age, admitted such currents of air 
as might be prowling about. The gentlemen 
in the sleeves murmured at this, and ventured 
to hint that the cold was coming it rather sharp 
and strong. 

" Be silent, ye scum of the earth," cried Mr. 
Codwise, the moment he detected a glimpse 
of insubordination, coming forward and plant- 
ing himself directly in their front, at the same 
time gently hoisting his shirt collar, " arn't we 
making men of you ? How do you expect to 
be worthy of freedom if you don't fit yourself 
for it by a course of trials and tribulations ? 
Look at me ! Didn't I risk my neck in getting 
you off the island — whose your deliverer but 
me, you bottle-flies ? There's few rich men's 
sons would ha' done as much — is there, Mr. 
Finch ? is there, Barrell ? True, I might ha' 
been sittin' by my father's parlor fire, eatin' 
sandwitches and drinkin' claret — and what do 
I do ? Why, I hire an omnibus at an expense 
of three dollars an hour, didn't I, Mr. Finch ? 
and blow me tight if I didn't wait upon you, you 
miserable wretches off the island, as though 
you had been so many Broadway promenaders 
of the sex, help you into your carriage and 
bring you to a friend's house for lodgings — 
didn't I, Mr. Barrell ? and now you grumble 
about that winder, do you ? May my buttons 
drop off, and my boots run down at the heel, 
if I don't give up politics and go into the 
shades of private life, if I see any more sich 
ingratitude and beastliness !" 

Puffer looked at the speaker, saw how poor 
and frivolous he was, in spite of his trinkets 
and fair apparel, but when he spoke, in boast 
of the home where he might be sheltered, a 
feeling wakened in Puffer's heart which he 
could not subdue. He thought of himself and 
the other together, side by side, and asked him- 
self, almost repiningly, why the vague hope 
that he might be one day restored to a home he 
had not known for years, should not be ful- 
filled ? Why, as in the other case, the trinkets 
he wore upon his person were pledges of pa- 
rental attachment, why the little trinket, the 
little broken jewel he had treasured .so Ion-, as 
the sole relic of any parent's love toward him, 



should not guide him by some kindly providence 
back to the happiness he should have known ? 
He wakened from his revery, and turning 
quickly upon Mr. Jarve Barrell, who stood 
by his side, he asked after Hobbleshank. Mr. 
Jarve Barrell's information was strictly pro- 
fessional. All he knew or could tell in the 
premises, was, that the old man, in company 
with a stranger, had stopped a long while ago 
and ordered a large supply of oysters to be 
ready on their return with sufficient beer to 
answer. They had never come back, and the 
j oysters were kept till midnight, when a party 
of sailors luckily coming in swept them up. 
That was all. Puffer asked no further ques- 
tions, but climbing the steps, thoughtfully, 
without salutation or farewell of any kind 
either to the agent or Mr. Barrell, was in the 
open air. There he wandered up and down 
two or three by-streets lost in thought. 

At last it occurred to him that he would re- 
pair to the old man's lodgings, and seek infor- 
mation of his two old friends ; this might only 
give pain, and to what purpose ? Just then a 
drum sounded about the corner, the current of 
I his thoughts was changed, and he turned into 
; the next street. A boy, in a cocked paper-hat, 
! (a brigadier's hat at least), beating a drum 
j with great energy, marched at the head of a 
I company of youth, who, fitted out in belts and 
sticks, and bearing crickets and hurdygurdys in 
i their hands, tramped along, assuming the port 
j of martialists and sticking close to the heels of 
I their leader. Puffer, with others, fell in at 
1 their wake and followed them down the city to 
! the front of a public hall, embellished with the 
full-length of a tall military gentleman in a 
i blue coat and yellow breeches, where, forming 
a line, they plied their instruments for a quar- 
\ ter of an hour, and then marched off. Puffer 
| Hopkins entered the hall ; the great room up 
stairs was packed close with citizens, listening 
to an excited individual, who walked up and 
down the platform, swaying his arms and foam- 
ing at the mouth, as though he were in a cage, 
roaring to be let out. This seemed to be to 
the crowd an entertainment of the first de- 
scription ; but Puffer, paying little heed to the 
orator, who he knew was going furious ac- 
cording to an understanding with the committee 
that arranged the meeting, glided about the 
room, singling out a man here, a man there, 
and whispering a word in his ear. In a few 
minutes, keeping clear of the platform and 
coasting along the wall out of view of the light, 
he got forth into the street again. 

Wherever he moved indications of the con- 
test of to-morrow were rife. The oyster- 
houses and tap-rooms, everywhere, were full ; 
the citizens throwing themselves upon oysters 
and punches, with infinite spirit, all through 
the night, and pausing only every now and 
then to form into a group and enter upon a dis- 
cussion of the prospects ami chances of the 
day. Sometimes a grim boy staggered i>y under 
a fardel of ballots from the printers; sometimes 



238 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



a bill-sticker paused, and, clattering hi3 paste- 
pot on the pavement, proceeded to embellish 
the wall with a pictorial and ornamental broad- 
sheet. Every street had its public meeting in 
the upper chamber of a tavern, whose win- 
dows glared with light. It was noticeable 
that in the neighborhoods of the Gallipot 
meetings — the friends of Gallipot being in 
possession of the city — the public lamps were 
lighted and burned away in the most brilliant 
and cheerful humor imaginable ; whereas, in 
all the streets lying about a meeting of the op- 
position, for a furlong or better, they utterly re- 
fused to afford a single ray to any that might 
be in search of such meeting or place of re- 
sort. Not only this, but it would not infre- 
quently happen that a public well would be 
found to be sunk, or undergoing repair, at the 
very mouth of the opposition halls, affording a 
capital opportunity for curious geological in- 
vestigation to such gentlemen of the opposition 
as might be inclined to step in. Even as it 
was — as if to supply any deficiency of the cor- 
porate light — new lights sprung up on every 
hand as the night deepened. In committee 
rooms and other resorts all over town, men 
were gathered about their tables, mapping out 
the work of to-morrow, brooding stealthily 
over circumventions and manoeuvres and 
strokes of craft ; in others, cutting tickets and 
folding them; in others, nursing the patriotic 
furor in innumerable punches, cock-tails, and 
cobblers. And so from every quarter their 
dusky lights streamed upon the street — making 
the air close and sultry — and portending surely 
enough the storm that was to break by morn- 
ing. Puffer, as he hurried about, dipping in 
for a minute at a caucus, for another minute at 
a tap-room, and again at a public meeting, 
where they seemed bent on keeping huddled to- 
gether all night long, seething and reeking and 
growing more confused and more determined, 
the longer they tarried ; Puffer waxed warm, 
too, and retired to the Fork, with a head full 
of schemes and a heart all on fire with the 
sure hope of a triumph. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE CHARTER ELECTION. 

The April sun streamed upon a city in the 
very crisis of a fever, flushed and curtained all 
over with flags like a mighty booth or tent of 
War. The color had apparently all passed out 
of the red brick houses — now pale with plac- 
ards — into the faces of the inhabitants. The 
election, rumbling and foretelling itself for 
months, had come; and while parts of the 
town — whole streets and neighborhoods — had 
the appearance of being abandoned and deso- 
late, others boiled and overflowed with life like 
so many whirlpools. Each poll or headquarter 
of the wards was the centre and heart of 



streams that choked the streets and blocked 
up all passage through or beyond. Banners 
run high up in the air, coiled and twisted and 
turned about as often as the politicians over 
whose heads they floated ; others, stretched 
across the thoroughfares, brushed the hats of 
the crowds, and, as they wavered to and fro, 
helped to fan the fire into a flame. The ex- 
citement was by no means diminished when the 
voters — many of whom had been up all night 
long preparing for the contest — rubbed their 
eyes, and read upon the fences affidavits (which 
had just come out) to the effect that Gallipot, 
the candidate of the Bottomites — as they were 
known at the canvass — had been a smuggler of 
British paints through the customhouse for 
years ; yes, British paints. Mr. Gallipot's 
enemies laughed horribly when they read it ; 

j but when they had leisure to turn round and 
read on an opposite wall (it had been drafted, 
printed, sworn to, and posted up almost w r hile 
they were busy spelling out the other), that 
Mr. Blinker, the president of the Phoenix com- 
pany, and their own candidate — he had been 
put up at the last moment by the opposition — 
had murdered a traveller fourteen years before, 
at Rahway, New Jersey, whose bones he had 
kept ever since in a writing desk with a false 
bottom, in his own house — they grinned again, 
but this lime they writhed and twisted as they 
grinned. 

In the mean time all parties were at work at 
their polling places. In all the lower region 
of the city the battle went smoothly; the vo- 
ters dropped in one by one, as to a party, with 
their notes of invitation in their hands, and 
quietly deposited their ballots, and passed 
away. Further up, and nearer the heart of the 
city, where life may be supposed to be more 
rampant and furious, there were constant out- 
breaks, little playful jets, all day long. 

As these bubbled up from time to time and 
burst, fragments of timber, branches of oak 
and hickory, were thrown out with such vio- 

■ lence and spirit, as to send voters of a peace- 
ful turn of mind trotting up the sloping streets 
which lead from this infested region ; and 
when such voters chanced to be of a respectable 
bulk and tonnage, they were watched with no 
little curiosity and interest by lookers-on who 
stood at the top, and saw with what pain and 
anxiety, and redness of face, they toiled up. 

In another ward the poll had been construct- 
ed and arranged a good deal on the principle of 
a puzzle, which the voters frequenting there 
were required, as an agreeable day's pastime, 
to solve. First, you had to go through a long 
blind hall, from the street ; then out into a yard ; 
then up a flight of stairs, through a long dark 
room; and then up a ladder, when, in an 
apartment so small that its inmates must have 
been got in by legerdemain, you had the pleas- 
ure of meeting three gentlemen — two of them, 
who approved of the juggle which had been 
set by their own party, smiling cheerfully — be- 
hind their green box, ready to wait upon you. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



23 S> 



Here was a delightful recreation for aged 
gentlemen of inactive habits, and delicate 
young gentlemen in tight-strapped pants ; an 
admirable device, and it worked well, for the 
plotters polled two votes to one — as they had a 
great run of sailors from a government vessel 
in the harbor, in the morning, all on their side, 
and quite as spirited an accession of lamp- 
lighters in the afternoon. 

But it was at the East river poll where 
Puffer Hopkins labored, that the struggle was 
steadiest and fiercest; it was the tie ward, 
where parties had in the previous election cast 
an equal vote, and the whole city now hung 
anxiously upon its returns. The poll was held 
in an old yellow building, its gable upon the 
street, and its front facing the river ; the voting 
room was an obscure dark corner, reached by 
a narrow entry, full of crooks and turns, 
through an old-fashioned door- way. Around 
this a great number of voters had lodged the 
night through, to be in readiness to put in the 
earliest vote the first day ; among them were 
the lightning-maker, whose uneasy slumbers 
against the wall had betrayed themselves by 
incessant cries of " bring the buckets !" and 
the cobbler, who had not slept a wink, inas- 
much as he had been engaged with a one-eyed 
stone-cutter in an elaborate argument to show 
that the only debts a man was bound to pay, 
were his grocer's (a line of business his wife's 
brother was in), and his shoemaker's. It was 
a pleasure to Puffer Hopkins to learn that the 
cobbler — a convert of his own — had deposited 
the first vote, although with such emphasis as 
to stave in the cover of the ballot-box, and 
cause himself to be taken into keeping by a 
couple of officers, who led him, roaring and 
remonstrating, to a neighboring watch-house. 
Before the morning was half spent the election 
was in full progress ; there were men running 
up and down the streets bringing in voters; 
others, housed in small wooden booths or 
cabins, distributing ballots; some declaiming, 
in high gusty voices ; some, farther apart from 
the throng, calculating the chances of the can- 
didates ; and others, even, who had withdrawn 
into by-streets in the neighborhood of the poll, 
plotting the distribution of the offices that 
would fall to the share of the victorious party. 
Toward the evening of the first day, to which 
moment, as commanding the largest throng of 
spectators, he had reserved himself, Mr. 
Blinker came upon the ground, attended by 
two or three hangers-on and runners, and look- 
ing very grand and decisive. There was an 
extraordinary severity in his look ; although his 
coat, a faded chocolate, was something the 
worse for wear, and a thought or two below 
the usual style of the president. This was 
odd; but presently it began to be whispered 
about, as all eyes were fixed upon it, that this 
identical chocolate garment was the cast coat 
of a distinguished senator of the United States, 
who had lately made a triumphant tour through 
the city. It was soon discovered, too, that the 



neck-stock which Mr. Blinker now wore was 
of the very same sable and satin texture as 
that worn by his eminent model on that occa- 
sion. Mr. Blinker had made influence with the 
great man ; and this was the result. As he was 
watched, moving down the walk majestically 
making gracious nods and recognitions on either 
hand, it occurred to the lookers-on that Mr. B. 
emulated not a little the gait and manner, and 
assumed, as nearly as was attainable, the voice 
of the illustrious senator. The spectacle was 
imposing but not conclusive; two loafers, to 
be sure, bailed the air with their hats with 
such vehemence as to drive the bottoms out ; 
but the effect of this was entirely destroyed by 
a couple of ragged young rascals, who had been 
put forward, clinging to his chocolate skirts, 
and whining out the paternal appellation, till 
they were dragged off by main force, amid the 
shouts of the mob, " That's a cruel wretch !" 
i " What a unfeelin' father !" and so forth. 

While Mr. Blinker spent his time in this 
i way, strutting about the poll — it was his native 
ward, and he had a pride in sticking to it — his 
! antagonist, Mr. Gallipot, honest Peleg Galli- 
! pot, was all over town, in his paint-dress, ma- 
! king interest, shaking hands, chewing, smoking, 
J drinking, as though he had been fifty men in- 
stead of one. The Gallipot hacks and stages 
I rushed about, with great linen flags streaming 
j to the wind, as though the horses had votes as 
' well as the half-drunken gentlemen inside, and 
' were anxious to get them in. Puffer Hopkins, 
for one, was everywhere ; haranguing ; folding 
tickets ; diving into committee-rooms ; arguing 
on the kerb ; was at every man's ear ; had 
every man by the hand. He seemed to have 
: multiplied himself; every third carriage-door 
: that opened, lo ! out popped Puffer, leading by 
the hand a couple of misty sailors ; a super- 
; annuated old man ; a quaker that hadn't voted 
for nineteen years, or some other wonder and 
miracle. 

The first day closed ; and at night the Galli- 
pots and Blinkerites repaired to their respect- 
ive quarters for an irregular canvass of the 
; result. The Gallipot party met in the upper 
chamber of the poll, of which, as the party at 
, present in power, they had possession ; and 
; their meeting was sufficiently promiscuous and 
■ piebald. Along benches fronting the raised 
platform, were seated, cheek by jowl, gentle- 
; men in fine beaver hats, and tatterdemalions, 
I with no covering but their own matted and dis- 
! cordant locks ; some in broadcloth coats of the 
1 latest cut, and some in jackets that, judging by 
j their texture and complexion, seemed to have 
I been fashioned out of sweeps' blankets. The 
j room was full, so full that it overflowed, a 
loafer or two, upon the stairs; and two or 
three men who occupied the platform, and who 

had watched the progress of the voting, down 

stuns, through the day, called over by turn, a 
list Of voters which they held in their hands. 

As they called, some one or other in the crowd 

would answer I'oi- each name, « '.rood,*' " bail,"' 



240 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



" doubtful," as the case might be ; the answer 
being given by such as supposed themselves 
familiar with the way of thinking and political 
turn of the person called. This proceeding 
was kept up till the roll was finished ; which 
was no sooner done, than an ambitious young 
gentleman, who had stood at the doorway 
watching its close, rushed off as special express 
and postboy, to carry the result to Fogfire hall, 
where it was waited for with much anxiety. 
Two or three speeches of a highly inflammatory 
character were delivered — the meeting broke 
up — and the first day's work was over. 

The sun, which had been in a fine mood all 
the first day, shining like a great eye into all 
corners of the city, warming voters into life, 
rolled up the sky, on the morning of the second, 
apparently as good-humored as ever. The 
Blinkerites were delighted ; they were the fair- 
weather party, and their well-dressed voters 
poured in in a steady stream for a couple of 
hours or better; but when, toward noon, a 
large, ill-looking cloud came looming along 
from the northwest, they began to grow gloomy, 
and sundry of the Bottom leaders walked round 
the corner and shook hands on the prospect of 
a good pelting shower. 

It was a false alarm ; the cloud, a mere gust 
of wind, passed off; the Blinkerites brightened 
up wonderfully. The tide was running strong 
and deep in their favor ; two to one, at least, 
entering the boxes on their side. Troops of 
nice-looking gentlemen were hurrying in ; gen- 
tlemen of doubtful politics were going over ev- 
ery minute. Blinker was standing against a 
great empty hogshead, on the corner, dividing 
the offices to his friends, who were gathered 
round him in large numbers, in advance. Ever 
since the cloud had blown over (which to be 
sure they couldn't help), the Bottomites had 
been horribly cast down. What was to be 
done ? Just then there was a shuffling of feet 
in the neighborhood of the poll ; a tumult in 
the entry ; the crowd outside looked in — there 
were officers' staves crossing and clashing in 
the hall ; great brawny arms raised and brought 
down with wonderful vigor — bodies pushed 
about — and presently the whole melee came 
tumbling into the street. The Gallipot lead- 
ers rubbed their hands and chuckled ; they \ 
knew what it meant. A detachment of the j 
Bottom Club had been concealed under the 
stairway of the hall, all the morning, lying in 
wait for an opportunity (in the meantime, [ 
amusing their leisure by tripping up as many 
inconsiderate Blinker voters as they could as 
they passed in) for a decisive demonstration. 
They, like their friends without, had formed 
good hopes of the shower ; but when the air 
cleared up so brightly and provokingly, they 
could restrain themselves no longer. A cat- 
call had been given, certain members of the 
fraternity had forced their way in at the back- 
door of the polling-room, others from the neigh- 
boring bar, and, first crowning the officers in 
attendance, they had distributed themselves 



about the hall and engendered the tumult — one 
of their little plans for reorganising and reform- 
ing society — which gave such unmixed satis- 
faction to their out-of-door friends. This blow 
was a decisive one ; the timid and peace-affect- 
ing Blinkerites kept aloof; and although the 
Blinkerite leaders came upon the ground in the 
afternoon, in tarpaulin hats and shag rounda- 
bouts, it was impossible to recover themselves. 
When the poll was shut, it was admitted on all 
hands that they had run behind, a hundred at 
least. There was another meeting for a can- 
vass, which differed from the other in no re- 
spect, save that in its very midst, a great polit- 
ical calculator, rushing in breathless from his 
own house, where he had been casting up the 
question, averred that they were to have, un- 
less their friends made superhuman exertions 
to-morrow (notwithstanding present flattering 
prospects), a majority of only twenty-five, with 
a floating prospect of three more if the weath- 
er proved foul. He staked his head on this re- 
sult. Another express was run to Fogfire hall ; 
sundry speeches of a still more excitable qual- 
ity delivered ; and the meeting dispersed, fe- 
verish and resolute. 

The third day brought unexpected relays 
from all quarters. The halt, the blind, the fee- 
ble, the asthmatic — came wheezing, and hob- 
bling, and tottering, and groping their way to 
the poll. Some poor scarecrows that appeared 
to have been mouldering away for years, in 
their piecemeal garments, in out-of-the-way 
holes and corners, were led in by the hand, and 
stood around as though they had been just dug 
out. Others, reeking and bloated, with lack- 
lustre eyes, appeared before the green boxes, 
and voted in the same manner as they would 
have called for a twopenny pint of spirits. 

The caldron had been stirred to its bottom, 
and its very dregs were floating up. Those 
that now voted were stragglers, coming in one 
by one ; but presently, a sharp-eyed looker-on 
might have discovered that a more steady 
stream was setting in, of a somewhat similar 
class. This was Mr. Finch's second detach- 
ment (his first had finished their work in the 
various wards, stealthily, the two previous 
days), his Island volunteers, who entered the 
polls at intervals, deposited their votes and 
quietly withdrew beyond reach of the officers' 
eyes as soon as possible — going in, that was 
Mr. Finch's device, most frequently on the arm 
of some gentleman of known character, who 
lent his responsibility for the purpose, and 
sharing his good character at the ballot-box. 
One of them, a notorious pickpocket, but who 
had chalked his face deeply enough to get for 
himself the sympathy of being a gentleman in 
ill health, had even tottered in, leaning on the 
shoulder of a little parson of an earnest parti- 
san disposition. 

Sometimes, as it happened more than once, 
when the volunteer firemen of Blinker politics 
gathered in any considerable number about the 
poll, waiting to put in their vote, a violent fire- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



241 



alarm would happen to be rung out from a neigh- 
boring market, which soon sent them scamper- 
ing away; afire in New York taking prece- 
dence of a funeral, an election, and everything 
else, but an invitation to a hanging inside of 
the prison yard. For these alarms, the Bot- 
tomites were indebted to the bell-ringer of their 
club, who lingered about the market, pulling 
the bell at opportune moments, of which he 
was advised by a trusty messenger sent down 
from the poll. The excitement deepened as 
the day advanced; quidnuncs and inquirers 
came hurrying in from every direction, to learn 
how the contest was going. 

As the day approached its close the creed of 
the two parties broadened ; their promises and 
professions became more frequent and more 
liberal ; their affection for the poor — the most 
readily reached by such devices — more devoted 
and fraternal. One party threw out the sug- 
gestion that a poor man should have two votes, 
in consideration of the hardships and disad- 
vantages of his lot. This the drummers and 
declaimers of the other party answered by sug- 
gesting that if gentlemen — gentlemen of means 
and ability — had the disposition they professed 
to serve the poor, why didn't they give 'em 
rooms in their three-story houses, with clean 
basins and towels and plenty to eat ? Advan- 
cing in this way, in their proclamations and 
professions, they at last became so comprehen- 
sive in their philanthropy, that certain pover- 
ty-stricken and simple-minded gentlemen, who 
stood by listening with greedy ear, flattered 
themselves that they and their families were as 
good as provided for, for the ensuing year, and 
went in and voted for one ticket or another, ac- 
cording as they preferred the fare, lodgings, 
and accommodations held out by either party. 

The concourse about the poll had swelled 
steadily for hours ; the street was full ; the 
windows of the neighborhood were packed close 
with heads and faces ; every lookout place of 
the headquarters itself, to the very roof, was 
occupied by men, women, and children, look- 
ing eagerly down, and watching the progress of 
the contest. There was a great lumber-pile 
hard by, and this, too, the crowd had climbed, 
and now swarmed about its top. As the sun 
went down, the crowd swayed to and fro, and 
there were certain persons in it who seemed to 
rock it back and forth as they would a cradle, 
when suddenly surging, with a terrible impulse 
against the wall, it burst its way into the house, 
and there was a cry that the ballot-boxes were in 
danger. In a minute the officers came hurry- 
ing, pale-faced, into the street, where they were 
tossed about in the crowd, the black-and-white 
tops of their staves floating about like so many 
fishing-droppers ; the mob swarmed in at the 
windows, over the back fence, through the hall 
(last of all), and the polling-room was in a trice 
completely overrun. 

At this moment Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, who 
had prevailed on two or three sturdy men to 
lift him on their shoulders, stood up, as well as 



he could with such support, and removing his 
hat, from which a cloudy shower of newspa- 
pers fell, presented his face at the broken fan- 
light of the entry-door. His hands were lifted 
up in supplication, and his look was an im- 
ploring one. It was some time before he could 
get a hearing. 

" Gentlemen, I do beseech you, I entreat and 
implore you, as you value your characters as 
citizens and as men, to restrain yourselves." 
From the imperfect character of the support on 
which he depended, Mr. Fishblatt's observa- 
tions were extremely irregular in their deliv- 
ery; one being given, as was this, with his 
face at the windoAV, and the next being entire- 
ly lost in the wood- work behind which his head 
descended. " I would ask any gentleman 
here," remarked Mr. Fishblatt, when he came 
up again, " if he keeps a snuff-box ? Did he 
value his privileges ? There were a couple of 
thousand persons in that crowd, as far as he 
could judge, three children to each; there was a 
spectacle, was it not ? The rights and immuni- 
ties of six thousand of the rising generation haz- 
arded by the present outrageous outbreak." He 
went down again for a few minutes. " The 
ballot-box, gentlemen," continued Mr. Fish- 
blatt, on his reappearance, " is the ark of our 
safety ; it's the foundation of our institutions, 
board, lodging, and two suits a-year to all of 
us. What would we be without the sacred bal- 
lot-box ? Where would stand your City hall ? 
Where the old Sugar house in Liberty street ? 
Where the Fourth of July ? Where the im- 
mortal names of Perry and Hamilton ? Where" 

He went down again ; this time for good, for 
his supporters, learning that the inspectors had 
got off" with their boxes through a by -gate in- 
to the next yard, and so from one yard to anoth- 
er, to a place of safety, had withdrawn, and 
Mr. Fishblatt was permitted to fall like a half- 
risen balloon, among the crowd. The crowd, 
who had given but little heed to Mr. Fishblatt's 
appeal, finding there was no further sport go- 
ing forward, gradually broke up and dispersed. 
The election was at an end ; the great contest 
determined one way or the other. 



CHAPTER XXV, 

THE END OF L> CMPr . 



JSXiS? 1 ? 1 ! ^ he °elief which his re- 
aTwTl w « on C v ACTish ^ f ° r *"* laV *»* 

w«i % i - e hy ott8 wcr y h °p c had crum - 

Dieu. ihe boy } such was the conv i ct i ou i:u h 
uwsweniv; face pressed u V on him, tin- boy 
w*8 i dead. To that pale yov.ig form, cold and 
ueatnwai\ lv as to him italw ays lav stretched in 
tiie wood, there was no r e surrection. li was 
gone irate another world am i seemed dragging 
aun, oy a gentle viok-r iCe hc ( . ou u n0 | 
auo\ The remorse * >vhich ^^h sometimes 



242 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



torpid, had been never entirely subdued, un- 
coiled itself more and more, and pierced him 
with strokes which caused him to cry aloud 
with anguish. He could not be silent nor at 
ease. He had fled from house to house, lodg- 
ing to lodging, where the horrible secret he was 
constantly urged to babble, caused men and 
women to fall away from hi3 presence like that 
of one sick with the plague. Even in cellars 
and cheap resorts, where the language of crime 
and wrong is a familiar dialect, they avoided 
his conversation, and begged him, in God's 
name, to ease his soul to parsons and magis- 
trates, and not to them. Even the grim ten- 
pin-player had deserted him. Leycraft's con- 
stant wakings at the dead of night, and the 
dreadful reproaches with which his soul la- 
bored against itself, were too much for him. 
So he flew from place to place ; from employ- 
ment to employment. He tried, and in vain, 
to quell his unhappy thoughts, to cheat him- 
self of that dreadful belief of the boy's death, 
by a constant change of work. He was now 
alone, in a rope-walk, where Ishmael Small's 
prying ubiquity had found him. The walk 
was a long, low-roofed shed. It was pitched 
in a hollow, on the outskirts of the city, and 
was out of sight of human habitation, and be- 
yond the sound of human voice. About it noth- 
ing but rank grass and odious weeds, thick 
with thorns and death-white blossoms, grew 
and pressed forward to the very door. On 
either side the shed was pierced with small 
narrow windows, its whole length, looking out 
on one hand, on a sluggish vein of water that 
oozed through the hard soil, and on the other, 
upon the field of shrubs and brambles. Here 
Leycraft, at the earliest hour of the day — it was 
just sunrise, and the sun, striking the shed on 
its eastern end, filled the walk with shadows- 
stood, his beard untrimmed, and his waist en- 
compassed with un worked flax, giving him the 
appearance of a satyr. 

He stood at the remotest end and looked 
down its whole dark length, with an eye which 
grew blank and unsettled when it found noth- 
ing to rest upon. Then it passed from win- 
dow to window back again, more blank than 
ever ; no friendly face looked in, not even the 
miserable picker who used to beg the refuse 
flax and ropes'-ends. He would have giv- 
en the world if only Ishmael had come and 
taunted him in the old fashion. And then, 
with something of p^yer and earnest imploring 
in his features, he shot his glance into a cor- 
ner, where two wrens h*.d held their nest for 
years, borrowing tow and threads of twine 
from the floor to build. The two wrens were 
gone. Not a sparrow nor a fly crossed the un- 
lucky window-sills. A dread stillness was 
present, resting like a cloud upon the roof and 
thickening the ai*-. The very walk seemed to 
have gone into de^y; it tottered and shook 
like one in a palsy, , s the silent winds hurried 
past. What wonder * Leycraft's soul was ap- 
palled within him ? 



"Lightnings blast me!" he muttered, strug. 
gling against the feeling that crept upon him, 
and made him cold to the heart ; " what do they 
mean by leaving rne here ? Why don't the 
sharks and indefatigables come and take me and 
hang me ?" Here he cast a side way look at the 
rope he had begun to twist. " I wish they'd 
send out the green wagon and treat me to a 
ride to the Tombs. Why don't they ? What 
do they mean ? They don't know their duty — 
that's plain. I ought to be kept in a cell till 
this cursed fever's gone off; and then I should 
be hung out to dry." He laughed at the fancy ; 
but it was a wretched, soulless laughs which 
betrayed him more than his words. His thoughts 
took a new turn, and, catching his breath, in 
the surprise with which another and deeper 
purpose than that of yielding his body to the 
magistrates glided into his mind, he went on 
now faster than ever with his task ; drawing 
out the flax with a secret satisfaction — as he 
paced backward along the hard, cold floor — 
every now and then putting forth his whole 
strength, and twisting the strands as firm and 
close as iron. It was wonderful with what care 
and skill he framed his work, choosing the 
cleanest flax in all the bunch, where there was 
no spot nor blemish — his eye, in its supernatu- 
ral keenness, could have detected a flyblow — 
shaping each strand delicately to an equal size, 
and twisting them all so cleanly together, that 
the cord, as fast as formed, was admirably 
round and firm, and not a thread or fibre hung 
loose. There was a strange pleasure in Ley- 
craft's look when he saw how well he pros- 
pered in his work ; but even in the midst oi 
his task a shudder came upon him ; his face 
grew dark and livid by turns ; and his eyes 
wandered about and seemed to dwell on a ter- 
rible and appalling company that was present 
only to him. For a time his hands refused to 
do the service to which they had been con- 
strained, and struggled against it, as if they 
too were endowed with a fearful consciousness. 
In this pause and agitation of his spirit, he 
searched his garments, and brought forth from 
his breast-pocket, a small, square parcel, which 
he proceeded, tremblingly, to open, fixing his 
eyes more keenly and steadily as each envelope 
was removed. His hand at length held dis- 
closed a half-bracelet, with its clasp ; and while 
he regarded it he shuddered anew, and writhed 
as in sudden pain. What was he to do with 
this ? He could not bear it about with him 
longer — it seemed too like the child's voice 
whispering in his ear ; frail tress as it was, it 
held him fast, as a cable, to the spot where the 
deed had been done ; its brassy clasp glared 
upon him like a serpent's eye. It seemed to 
him now like the dead boy's legacy — for he had 
taken it almost from his hand ; carrying with 
it, at all seasons of day and night, its own 
avenging conditions. What was to be done 
with it ? At this moment, and while the ques- 
tion demanded, every minute, an answer more 
loudly, a shrunken and troubled face looked in 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



243 



at one of the windows of the walk. It was the 
face of an old man, who, full of an anguish dif- 
ferent — ah ! how different, from that of Ley- 
craft — had wandered in the suburbs, many days, 
and many weary, weary nights, too, and who 
had strayed, in the vacancy that had come up- 
on him, to that place. It was Hobbleshank; 
who, when he had gathered thought to peruse 
the person before him more closely, and saw 
what unearthly look had settled in his features 
— how white, and trenched with deep, dark 
lines as it was, like a scarred coffin-plate it 
seemed — recoiled from the window, and gave 
signs of retreating altogether. 

" For Heaven's good sake !" cried Leycraft, 
in a tone of anguish that went to the old man's 
heart, " don't leave me now. Stay only an 
hour or so, if not so long, five minutes may do ; 
five minutes, at least. Come, come, you'll 
give me five minutes !" 

The old man returned to the window, but 
resisted steadily all entreaty to come in. 

" This is cruel !" said Leycraft, aloud, and 
then, partly to him-self, " the last man with 
whom I shall change word ; and he won't give 
me his company as a Christian, but stands there 
gazing through a window on me, as i[ I were a 
wild beast at a show." 

At that moment, Leycraft, who had bent 
down while uttering these words to himself, 
raised his head and caught the eye of the old 
man — his neck stretched forward its utmost 
length — fastened on the bracelet which he held 
in his open hand. He caught it back at once, 
and restoring it quickly to its enclosure, thrust 
it into his breast. 

There was something fearful in that old 
man's face, now that the light fell upon it; — 
it was the very face that had watched him all 
through the night, in the garret of the farm- 
house, and against which he had contended. 
This was another blow that staggered him on 
swifter to his fate. He went on stranding and 
coiling the rope, holding every feature rigid, 
and bracing his nerves with all his will, lest 
his purpose should give way. The cord was 
finished. Leycraft rose up, wiped his brow, 
on which a cold, thick sweat had gathered — 
went to the window, and while Hobbleshank 
could not move in his surprise, he placed in 
his hand the parcel he had concealed. 

" There," said he, « take that; it's a bequest 
from a man that will never know man more. 
It's the gift of a young friend, the dearest I 
ever had, and I wish you'd make much of it." 

He then proceeded, without another word, 
to put every utensil of the walk in its place ; 
coiled up the rope he had made with so much 
care, in the crown of his hat ; closed the win- 
dows, leaving Hobbleshank without, lost in 
vague wonder and alarm ; drew to the door, 
and putting the key in a safe concealment, 
where the other workmen mi^ht find it when 
they came — as they would in an hour or two — 
lie withdrew from the walk, which was now 
dark, and close as a tomb. He shaped his way 



toward the river, looking back not once, but 
choosing the obscurest paths and bye-ways, 
and following them steadily. Once he leaped 
a wall, and crouching as he ran, he skirted 
along the fence for half a mile or more, and 
then he got into an untra veiled road, where he 
made good speed, and with a comfort — such 
comfort as his condition allowed — to himself. 
In leaving this he was forced to pass a public 
way where there was a constant throng of 
travel; and, while in act of crossing, hear- 
ing the rattling of wheels from the city, he fled 
into a blackberry meadow, and there lay hid in 
the bushes for better than an hour. 

He was now within sight of the woods ; and 
when, emerging from his ambush, his eye first 
fell upon them, he shrunk back, and his feet 
for a moment refused to bear him on. It was 
an instant only ; and then he laughed to him- 
self at his folly in spoiling the good gait he had 
been travelling. 

At the woods — the black, dull, hemlock 
woods, which lay like a dark stain upon the 
earth — he did not enter at a point which would 
bear him soonest to the place he sought; but 
fetched a circuit of better than a furlong, and 
looking about him with a trembling eye, he 
crept into them, as if by stealth. The sun had 
not yet made good his strength, and the woods 
still swarmed with bats and birds of darkness, 
which kept about, and shut back the light by 
the wide-spread wings with which they op- 
pressed the air. Under foot the ground was 
heavy with a sluggish sweat, rather than dew, 
and through blind paths and among tufts of 
useless grass, Leycraft picked his way ; wind- 
ing about in long circles, and only approaching 
the spot by degrees. His eyes wandered be- 
tween the trees, as though a phantom were 
walking just before him ; if he had cast a look 
upward but once, he would have seen how 
blue and peaceful was the sky above him — but 
this he heeded not. He had come to the edge 
of a by-path that cut through the woods ; in a 
minute more and he would be on the very spot 
itself. He paused and sat upon a fallen trunk 
to gather his strength. What he had done 
and what he was to do came upon him in all 
their hideousness, and his heart misgave him. 
He would have retreated if he could. At that 
moment he heard a step approaching ; a man 
passed by, and as Leycraft looked out, oh how 
his soul begged and implored that he would 
come and reason with him, and steal from his 
heart the purpose which clung like a dagger in 
its very core ! The cold sweat stood upon his 
brow, in the agony with which he was moved. 
The man bore in his hand a walking-stick, 
with which, with a determined look, he smote 
a tall weed that grew in the path, to the ground. 
There was clearly no hope for Leycraft. Ht 
sprung up, and almost at 1 bound, stood upor 
the earth where, more than twenty years au r .< 
he had cast down a young child, as he would I 
frail vessel, that all its life mighl be spilled 
and never gathered Op again. He knew lb 



244 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



place — knew it at once, down to the smallest 
blade that grew about. The rock was there, 
under the lee of which the basket that held the 
child had been set; the old gnarled branch 
stretched over it — older now than when it 
shook its young summer leaves upon the ground. 
Every circumstance and incident of the act 
rushed back into his mind with a fearful dis- 
tinctness. How he had borne the child from 
the farm-house in his arms — the very look of 
the nurse who had intrusted it to him in the 
belief that a little air would be so reviving and 
refreshing to the poor dear — how, when he 
heard the laugh and prattle of young children j 
at play in an orchard through which he passed, 
he had repented of any part in the deed — and , 
how, again, when he bethought him of the rage 
of the broker, and the spite he would wreak 
on him through the debtor's jail, he had hurried j 
on. There was one good thought, too, that 
came back : that when he had laid the child 
where he was to be left to die— for his soul re- 
fused to do it rougher violence — he had lifted 
a leaf, shed by the overhanging branch upon 
its little lips, so giving it another chance to 
live. He remembered, too, how he had severed 
the bracelet about its neck, in twain, taking 
one of its parts and leaving the other, with the 
hope that the child, should it live to escape its 
perilous exposure, might be recognised and re- 
claimed. 

As he was pondering, the dead child seemed 
to spring from the ground, rising slowly upon 
him, and growing rigid in every limb as he 
rose, until he stood regarding him with a fixed 
stony eye, his little arm stretched toward him 
in menace, more terrible than if it had been a 
mailed hand aimed against his breast. He 
staggered before it. The wind, which had been 
gathering since sunrise, swept through the 
wood with a howl like that of an angry popu- 
lace. Leycraft, whose face and brow dripped 
with sweat, and whose body was as chill and 
comfortless as if it had been steeped in the 
river, cast a fearful glance behind him, and 
snatching off his hat in desperate haste, he 
stepped upon the rock, and made fast an end 
of the cord to the old branch, which the tree 
held out like a withered arm toward him. The 
tree creaked — there was an awful groan, and 
the forfeit was paid. At that moment a crow 
flew screeching from a neighboring tree-top 
straight through the wood, and, as it rose 
toward the clouds that lowered on its flight, it 
seemed like the dark spirit of the man, on its 
way to the angry heaven whose judgment he 
had dared to invoke. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

hobbleshank's return. 

Upon the ground where he had fallen in the 
shock of surprise and bewilderment, Hobble- 



shank sat, with the trinket in his hand, which 
seemed to hold him spell-bound and motionless. 
As he recovered his powers, and was aware of 
the gift in his charge, he would have shouted 
to Leycraft, and called him back, but, when he 
looked in the direction he had taken, Leycraft 
was out of sight. 

The clasp was discolored as if often held in 
a damp hand ; but the tress, its other part, was 
fresh and bright, in its auburn hues, as when 
first set in its place ; and as he turned it over 
and over again, his tears fell fast upon it, for 
he knew well — who could mistake it? — the 
sweet brow, now lying in the earth, from which 
it had been shorn. Then he recalled what the 
strange man had said. "It's the gift of a 
young friend, the dearest I ever had, and I 
wish you'd make much of it !" He repeated 
them over and over again. Yes, those were 
the words. And then a hope came floating in- 
to his mind that was like a new life and air to 
all his powers ; a hope that filled his heart with 
a genial noon, in which all old despondencies, 
and sorrows, and sadnesses, shrunk away, and 
left him glad and happy, beyond measure. The 
boy — his child — his young self— so the words 
gave him warrant — was not dead. He had 
lived to be the companion of grown men ; to be 
with them, and with them share friendship and 
intimacies. So he construed what Leycraft 
had said. He bounded up, and choosing out 
the fairest of all the roads, he took his way to 
the city. It was a green path ; and the trees, 
which had stepped to the road-side from a 
neighboring wood, for that very purpose, bent 
over the traveller, and whispered peace and a 
pleasant journey to him. Then he came to 
bare fences, along which the small-eyed birds 
hopped and twittered, making merry with the 
old man as he came galloping along. After 
this, there was an open tract of sky and field 
about which the swallows flew swiftly, writing 
their names in the air, and tying all sorts of 
hard knots as they skimmed along, backward 
and forward, and up and down. 

At the pace with which he speeded on, he was 
soon in the edge of the city. The bells, for 
some reason or other, were ringing a quick 
peal ; if they had been the voices of angels ho- 
vering in the air, they could not have sounded 
more sweetly to Hobbleshank. 

He came to a park or square, in which chil- 
dren were at play, and bursting through a gate, 
he borrowed from a little blue-eyed lad — who 
yielded it partly in Tear, partly in love — the 
hoop on which he was resting — the old man 
sprang away like the youngest of them all, 
and, in the madness of his new hope, drove it 
round and round the park, humming to himself, 
" It's the gift of a young friend, the dearest I 
ever had, and I wish you'd make much of it !" 
Leaving the park, with thanks to his young 
friend, whom he had caught in his arms and 
blessed with kisses that exploded like so many 
squibs through the place, he rambled breath- 
less, but by no means wearied, into a great 



PUFFER HOPKEYS. 



245 



thoroughfare. Here he found new objects to 
feed his rapture. There were caps and canes, 
and dainty little Wellington-boots in the shops, 
in which the haughtiest parent, the show-bill 
said, might be proud to see his son eating 
ices and walking Broadway. 

How often, ah, how often, during his twen- 
ty years of sore trial and anguish, had the old 
man rambled from window to window, from 
shop-door to shop-door, choosing a little blue- 
ed cap at one, a pearl-tipped cane at 
another, and the jauntiest pair of Wellingtons 
he could pitch his eye upon at another — and, 
in his fancy, arraying the boy who should have 
been so apparelled, and at that moment walk- 
ing, with a little hand in his, at his side ! He 
had so taken the child from the day he was lost, 
and carried him forward, in imagination, 
through all the stages of childhood and youth, 
up to the manhood, where, if but now living, 
he would have arrived. 

He well remembered the very day on which 
the child had attained his quizzical, bird-like 
swallow-tail, which the doating old man had 
picked out and even bargained for, months be- 
fore. Pondering upon these old pleasures, his 
feet had brought him, almost without the guid- 
ance of his will, to a door in a by-street, the 
red and yellow board over which denoted that 
a select school for children was kept within. 

He opened the gate, the trick of which he 
knew well, walked through a paved alley, 
and turning in at a door half way up. was in 
the very heart and bosom of the select school 
at once. The select schoolmistress — his old 
friend and who knew his humor well — was 
seated in a well-worn rocker in the middle of 
her little room, arrayed in her plain neat eown 
and cap, her book open on her lap, her arms 
folded upon her breast, and watching, with a 
kindly look, through her srreat glasses, the ef- 
forts of a tiny white-haired child, to master the 
twenty-sixth letter of the alphabet. Hobble- 
shank laid off his hat, took his seat at the side 
of the mistress, who had not even turned when 
he came in, althou?h the whole row of little 
scholars stared in a line from the bench on 
which they were fixed against the wall. They 
all knew the old man, but it was so long now 
since he had been at the school, that they could 
not avoid a welcome with their looks. What a 
tuneful nest, embowered in its obscure corner, 
had that little school been to him ! How his 
eye had ranged, as his finger would on a mu- 
sical instrument, along thl class, beginnine at 
the least and youngest, and soundin? his way 
up, fancyin? each in turn to be his child and 
son. They had caught his look and loved him 
for it. His joy was too overflowing, too much 
in excess, to admit of his tarrying long there 
or anywhere ; and so, leaving a tribute of good- 
will in the mistress's hand, to be distributed 
amone the scholars, and besreinjr in her ear for 
a half-holyday for the school, he broke away 
and was in the street aeain. 
Even the three gilt balls which hung dan- 
16 



gling over the brokers door in the street 
through which he hurried, and which used to 
look so hideous to him, now seemed to have a 
gleam of sunshine and promise in them. There 
was another street, the next to his, through 
which he could not fail to pass. Here, years 
before, he had formed an intimacy, a very close 
and friendly intimacy, with a clothier's block 
which stood at the corner (to be sure it had no 

I head, your finely-dressed gentlemen rarely 
have , swelling and expanding its breast in all 

: the splendors of a blue frock and pantaloons, 
with a handsome white vest and ruffles to 

' match. The intimacy lasted six months, du- 
ring which the old man had paid a daily visit 
to his silent friend, when it was abruptly bro- 
ken off, because Hobbleshank was quite sure 
his son must by that time have outgrown gar- 
ments of that gentleman's cut and dimensions. 
Farther on, and still nearer the heart of the 

! city, Hobbleshank, hurrying along in a joyous 
mood — he had directed his feet that way — came 

! upon a house in which, even at broad day, there 
was a sound of music, a throng of carriages at 
the door, and the very house itself palpitating 
and quaking with the pulses of the gay dance 
that was going on within. The old man had 
a good heart to join in on the very flagging 
where he stood, for the house and he were old 

j and early friends. Far back in that past time, 
whence dated, in two directions, all his joys 

; and sorrows, it had been Aunt Gatty's ; there 
it was that Hobbleshank had first met his young 
wife ; there had been wedded to her ; and there 
had spent many a joyous night, when the world 
was young with him, and when even old Aunt 
Gatty had wealth and kind words more at com- 
mand than now. As he stood by the door, gos- 
siping with the drivers and other loungers — 
gathering what he could of the story of the 

; wedding that was going forward, and compa 
ring it as he went along with the circumstan- 
ces of his own — his heart reproached him for 
taming there, and withholding his good for- 
tune from his two kind old friends at home. 
Casting a bright half-dollar upon the ground — 
where he left the coachmen, who had been for 
a long time scant of calls, scrambling for it — 
he hurried away. At the good speed with which 

! he moved, an^ by dint of running in and out — 
from street to pavement, from pavement to 
street — not less than forty times, he was in no 

I very long time at his own door, which he con- 
fessed to himself had something of an outland- 
ish look, now that he had been absent from it 
so long. 

Bursting in to declare his news, he was ar- 
rested in the very mid-career of his exultation, 

i by a deep moan, proceeding from the corner of 

'the chamber. Looking thither he was inex- 
pressibly shocked, and stood rooted at t; 

, threshold. In the corner of the room, close in 
the remotest angle of the hearth, bent nearly 

I double (ten years at least older in her look than 

(when he had left her), and razing into vacan- 
cy, sal Aunt Gatty, clad in deep mourninc. 



246 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



even to her small crimped cap, which, jet-black 
and fitted closely to her head, gave to her fea- 
tures a pale and deathly aspect. At her side 
stood Dorothy, tending on her in some office 
suited to her condition, and striving to sooth 
her with words of solace and comfort. 

The aged woman refused to be comforted, 
and thrust her companion away from her, con- 
stantly ejaculating, "He is dead — dead; and 
I am the unlucky woman that killed him. 
Is this the way that I fulfilled a deathbed trust ? 
God ! oh, blessed God !" and here she moaned 
and pined as in an agony that wrung her very 
soul. " Deal gently with me for this — it was 
not my wish — he would go forth ; but then, I 
should have held him back, even by force. Oh, 
my dear, kind playfellow — now in heaven — is 
this the way I have kept my promise ? Look 
not in God's book of records and see what is 
against Gatty — your Gatty, you loved to call 
me. Plague me no more, Dorothy, I have slain 
the poor old man ; go away, in Heaven's name, 
and let me die. Go away." 

Then, while Dorothy stood by, weeping and 
wringing her hands over this mournful wreck, 
the aged woman fell away into vacancy, awa- 
king only every now and then to utter a 
deep moan, and renew her complaint. 

Hobbleshank, who had regarded all these 
goings-on with a bewildered look, could re- 
strain himself no longer, but, hurrying forward, 
stood before them — his hat a little to one side, 
where he had fixed it that his friends might 
know at a glance what mood he was in, and 



ture, crept upon her, and bearing her to her 
bed within, and laying her gently to rest, they 
returned to the other chamber. Hobbleshank, 
reviving rapidly from the gloom which Aunt 
Gatty had cast upon his spirits, took a place 
by a small table that Dorothy had drawn out, 
and launched forth in a glowing description of 
the good luck on which he had so lately stum- 
bled. Dorothy, who could not share in all the 
good hopes which he built on the disclosure of 
the stranger and the possession of the half- 
bracelet, did, nevertheless, strengthen and en- 
courage Hobbleshank to go on in these commu- 
nications, by a cold ham, which she produced 
from a closet, where it had stood untasted and 
inviting the knife for several days ; and also 
by calling in — through the ministry of a rag- 
ged-haired and bare-footed girl, who was al- 
ways on the prowl for small errands in the 
great hall — a pot of Albany-brewed and two 
dozen oysters, which, the last being well pep- 
pered and swallowed at a snap, added not a lit- 
tle to the spirit of the old man's narration. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

A NOTABLE SCHEME OF ME. FYLER CLOSE. 

There was not a phase of the neighboring 
sick man's malady, from the day he mis-but- 
toned his coat in the yard — to which pass he 
was brought, being a tradesman, by the fall of 
the great square breastpin, shining like an illu- 1 wheat from twenty shillings to ten at a clap — 
mination in the front of his bosom. He stood ' down to that when he was laid shouting on his 
before them — his doubtful eye closed hard, and ; bed, that Fyler Close had not watched. By 
the other opened in full blaze upon them, a , the hour he stood at his window — forgetting 
smile on his face, and a hand extended to each, i baker, blacksmith, and haberdasher, in the ear- 
In this extraordinary costume and posture it | nest gaze with which he regarded every turn 
was some time before even Dorothy was wil- of the disease, while the patient rambled the 



ling to acknowledge him ; and even, after she 
had admitted it was Hobbleshank and no coun- 
terfeit — there remained his right hand, still 
extended, waiting to be grasped by Aunt Gat- 
ty. It was a long time before Aunt Gatty was 
willing to look at him ; and when she did, at 
length, turn her head slowly about and take 
measure of his person, she regarded him with 
infinite scorn and repulsion. 

" It's a cheat," she said, after a long survey, 
and a longer pondering, " you are practising up- 
on me ; this is not my old friend that I am to 
account for ; no, no ! Don't you think I know 
my good friend Hobbleshank ? This is some 
one that has stolen his garments and is trying 
to play tricks with me." She returned to her 
old posture, and could be brought by no per- 
suasion or entreaty to a further recognition. 

" We must leave her to herself," said Dor- 
othy, drawing Hobbleshank apart ; " you 
will get back into her recollection by degrees. 
It takes days with her now to fix and unfix a 
notion. She will presently fall asleep." 

They watched her for a little while, when 
slumber, coming in to befriend exhausted na- 



yard, in its early stages, or lay strapped upon 
his couch at its height. The tears, the groans, 
the whims, the flights and wanderings of the 
lunatic, were a delicious banquet to Fyler. 
He meant to cut with a weapon of double edge, 
and this sharpened it, both sides at once. The 
deed was found — there could be no question of 
that — which helped Hobbleshank back into the 
farm-house whence Fyler had dislodged him, 
by a master-stroke, many years ago. Should 
he succeed in recovering possession, there 
would be a long and heavy arrear of rents to 
be returned. This would never do. The boy, 
to be sure, must b^ found — must be proved to 
be alive. Notwithstanding the bold and hardy 
face with which he gave out that such as would 
find the child must grope in the earth, digging 
deep, an uneasy conviction that he lived kept 
crowding into his mind. Vague rumors to this 
effect, traceable to no clear source, it is true, 
had from time to time prevailed. He knew of 
Leycraft's death ; Ishmael had brought in the 
news the second day after. He had been found 
on his knees, the branch bent and twisted from 
its place by an unearthly struggle, his head 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



247 



turned to one side, as if regarding an object 
that stood at his side, just behind him — and his 
hands clasped firmly together. 

Fyler, on hearing these eircumstances, had 
merely called the man a fool, wondered he 
hadn't taken poison, which would have been a 
quieter death — and dismissed the subject, ap- 
parently from his mind. To be sure, he had 
had an unpleasant vision the night after, in 
which Leycraft appeared, on his knees, knock- 
ing at the door of his closet, and begging, in 
God's name, to be let in. But what of that ? 
The dream had passed away ; and getting up 
the next morning a quarter of an hour earlier 
than usual, he opened his door cautiously, and 
finding no such supplicant there — as, in truth, 
he had half expected to — he put himself at ease. 

Then there was the bracelet, which he knew 
Leycraft had carried on his person for years, 
but which Ishmael's stealthy scrutiny had failed 
to find there now, another clew to the child. 
The cloud, he confessed to himself, began to 
thicken a little ; and now he meant to clear all 
obstacles and entanglements at a bound. In 
a few days the forge was silent ; the anvil 
uttered not so much as a tinkle — the broker 
had levied his judgment, which had hung dan- 
gling, like a great chain, for months over the 
blacksmith's head : the blacksmith's fire was 
quenched, and his hammers muffled for ever. 
A few days more, and the haberdasher — thrift- 
less woman — was forced to send her children i 
out privily to beg ; Fyler had swept her shop I 
with a comprehensive bill of sale. The piano 
in the yellow house had gone gouty in the legs [ 
long ago ; and was now taken to the hospital ] 
in the square, out of a movement of pure be- 
nevolence in the bosom of Mr. Close. As to 
the baker, on a close scrutiny of accounts, the 
broker, finding a clear balance against himself 
of four-and-threepence, with a fraction, thought 
it not expedient to move him just at present. 
All that remained was the Row, to show to the 
world that Fyler Close was worth a cent ; and 
Fyler chanted a psalm to the tune of a rattling 
song he had heard at a cheap place of enter- 
tainment when he was a young man, with 
great spirit, as he chinked the silver in his 
hand and thought of this. He had finished the 
psalm, and, getting into a more advanced 
stage of pleasantry, was striving, with whimsi- 
cal success, to adapt some common-metre meas- 
ure that he might recall, to the fitful shouts of 
his neighbor, when Mr. Small came in, bear- 
ing upon his left arm a pile of clothes, hung 
loosely over, and in his right a crook-necked 
staff, with which he had thrust the door open, 
and which he now employed in putting il to 
again. Upon his head, covering and extin- 
guishing the glory of his own individual cap, 
rested a straw hat, stretching out before and 
behind, twisted up convulsively at the .'■ides 
and discolored and stained in every strand with 
sweat. Mr. Small might have been mistaken 
by a rash observer, at first sight, as he stood 



resting on his crook, for a patriarch gone to 
seed. The broker knew him for what he was, 
and hailed him at sight. 

" This is a melancholy affair, Ishmael," said 
the broker, shaking his head dolefully. 

" It can't be helped ?" asked Ishmael, while 
a lurking smile crept upon his visage. 

"I am afraid it can't," rejoined Mr. Close; 
" I don't see how I can avoid going out of my 
wits." 

" Anyhow, Uncle Fyler," said Ishmael, " I 
hope for my sake you'll not go so far you can't 
come back again. You'll be good enough to 
recollect that." 

" It's very painful, though," continued Fy- 
ler ; " here am I, Ishmael, this morning in full 
possession of all my faculties, according to hu- 
man observation, equal to a calculation in com- 
pound interest, or the drawing of a mortgage, 
with extra conditions and policy-clauses — be- 
fore night what'll I be ?" 

" I'm afraid to say," said Ishmael, starting 
back and lifting both hands, as though to shut 
out a disagreeable vision. 

" But I'm not," answered Fyler, twitching 
his whiskers, « a miserable wreck, an insane 
rag-picker ; what'll be my business ? To go 
about running into gutters, and poking street- 
pools and rag-heaps — and I shouldn't wonder 
if it disagreed with me so much as to make me 
twist my face and beat myself, and do such go- 
ings-on that everybody'll say, ' Fyler has lost 
his reason.' " 

"I shouldn't wonder," echoed Mr. Small, 
and at the prospect of so cheerful a result, 
presented so vividly, both Fyler and Ishmael 
broke into a gentle laugh. 

f( Was he in his right mind always ?" asked 
Fyler, looking up edgewise at Ishmael from 
where he sat, allowing his glance to rest a mo- 
ment, in its way, upon the garments over his 
arm. " Was the owner of these always right ?" 

" Wonderfully so," answered Ishmael ; " the 
very sanest picker I ever knew. He was a ex- 
traordinary chap, that old fellow," pursued 
Mr. Small, " he would pick a couple of hogs- 
heads a day, sir, and, with a run, jump over 
'em at night, standing on end, as lively as a 
grasshopper in the first line o' business. He 
had a ambition above rags, and that was the 
ruin of him. One morning — it was a lovely 
one — the baker's winders was all full of smo- 
king rolls and fresh gingerbread, the milk-wag- 
ons was on the jump, and the red-cheeked 
chambermaids puttin' their houses into clean 
faces, like queens' — our friend goes out in 
prime spirits to pick a little before breakfast. 
There was a big heap in Hanover square to 
be overhauled that afternoon, and the thoughts 
of that before him put him in such a flow, he 
could hardly hold in for joy. Well, sir, he 
was ft-gftim 1 alons; all well enough, till he conies 
to 'Publican alley, and there he balked— he 
wanted to be an old-clo' man, and then wis 
something up that alley that tempted him I 



248 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



than a evil spirit. He couldn't hold back ; so 
up the alley he bolts, leaving his basket (which 
he begun to be ashamed of), at the mouth ; he 
comes to a airy, a very deep but very delicious 
airy, too, for there, as he peeps through the 
railin', he sees that vicious old coat that was 
to be his undoin', a hangin' in its old place 
over the back of a chair, close up by the win- 
der : the winder was up — the old chap listened 
— there was nobody stirrin' — he laid himself 
close up against the rail, and stretched down 
his stick till he gels the old feller by the col- 
lar, and begins to tug. Tuggin' was fatal work ; 
he was too wiolent ; the gate he was leanin' 
agin gives way — the gratin' to the coalhole 
was up — the old chap pitches headlong in, and 
slidin' on his belly to the very bottom, cracks 
his neck. There was the vanity of 'spirin' 
above his sphere ! He was a bosom-friend o' 
mine ; and as he forgot to mention me in his 
will, I bought his hat and trousers and stick 
and basket, from the crowner's man, for a 
couple of plugs, to remember him by. They 
was cheap at that !" 

" I wonder if they would fit me, Ishmael — it 
would be curious to try, wouldn't it ?" 

The broker lifted the garments gently from 
IshmaePs arm, displaced the hat, and, posses- 
sing himself of the crook and basket, placidly 
withdrew to his closet, leaving Mr. Small lean- 
ing against the casement, his cap jauntily 
cocked and one leg crossed upon the other, re- 
garding the broker as he withdrew with a look 
of the profoundest admiration and respect. It 
was capitally done, that he couldn't deny. 

In a few minutes, during which audible 
laughter, kept pretty well under though, had 
resounded from the closet, an outlandish fig- 
ure appeared from its concealments, locking 
the door carefully behind and thrusting the key 
in a pocket. It wasn't the broker. Ishmael, 
unbending from the posture he had maintained, 
and spreading himself, with a hand on either 
knee after the manner of a jockey making him- 
self familiar with the points of a horse on show, 
said it wasn't Fyler Close — he'd stake his life 
on it — it wasn't Fyler. 

The figure moved out upon the floor, as if to 
give Mr. Small an opportunity to confirm his 
impressions. They couldn't be shaken ; he 
clung to his first belief. There was the old 
yellow hat, which helped the face underneath 
it to a look so small and shrunken ; then the 
roundabout and trowsers, loose and flaunting, 
and washed by a thousand showers and sweats 
and stains, out of all color. No reasonable 
man could have thought of going out of his 
senses (even from an overgrown coat and short 
pantaloons), into such an ill-assorted apparel. 
Moving up and down, the figure, keeping a 
hard, steady countenance, proceeded to fish 
with the crooked stick which he carried in his 
hand, in various sections of the apartment as 
in imaginary pools, and drew up from time to 
time supposititious strips of canvass and linen, 



which, with great care and skill, he deposited 
in the bottom of a basket that hung upon his 
arm. Excellent ! Ishmael protested that it 
brought his friend the picker back so vividly 
before his mind, that it was as much as he 
he could do to refrain from shedding tears. Af- 
ter practising in this way for better than a 
quarter of an hour, the figure came and halted 
before Ishmael, letting the arm which held the 
basket fall its full length, and in the other hold- 
ing the stick — as is the established custom of 
pickers — with its crook downward, and regard- 
ing Mr. Small with melancholy steadiness of 
visase. 

" I'm a poor old man, now, Ishmael," said 
the old gentleman ; " very poor — worth not so 
much as Mrs. Lettuce. By-the-by, Ishmael, 
isn't it sirange, Mrs. Lettuce has never called 
for that balance on the mortgage in the mas- 
ter's hand ? It was just three shillings and a 
penny, and it's very wrong in her not to look 
to it. You should mention it when you see 
her. It's flying in the face of Providence not 
to look after her own. Have you seen the poor 
woman lately, Ishmael ?" 

Ishmael averred that he had, in the mar- 
ket. 

tl What did she say, Ishmael — did she seem 
to bear her fortune meekly ?" 

" She said," answered Ishmael, who was 
bursting with suppressed satisfaction at the 
masterly manner in which the old gentleman 
was carrying it off-—" She said, sir, that you 
was one of the greatest scoundrels that ever 
went unhung ; that you had robbed her of her 
radishes, and 'sparagus, and stockings, and 
money, and character, like a heathen boy-con- 
strictor, she called it ; and she'd see, sir, wheth- 
er she wouldn't have satisfaction out of you 
yet !" 

" I wonder what the poor old woman's liv- 
ing on that makes her so savage ?" asked Mr. 
Close, mildly. 

"As far as I can learn," answered Ishmael, 
" for the last fortnight on b'iled turnip-tops — 
not such a very violent species of food." 

" Where does she get boiled turnip-tops, I'd 
like to know ?" asked Mr. Close, whose eyes 
began to gleam a little. 

" They're given to her by her old friends in 
the market," replied Ishmael; "but they've 
cut off the supply, at last — it sp'ilt the sale. 
She'l] beg a couple of weeks more, with an 
old cloak and red handkercher, they all say, 
and then she'll go to the almshouse." 

" The best thing the poor creature can do," 
said Fyler ; " I thought so long ago. She'll be 
much more comfortable there than out of doors 
blabbing secrets and ripping up old stories of 
no use to any one." 

The interview with Mr. Small concluded, 
the broker saying that he had a heavy day's 
work before him — foursquares and better than a 
dozen streets to scour — pulled open the door, and 
went forth — Ishmael following at a distance. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



249 



CHAPTER XXVUI. i through the city. A flame, no larger than a 

| man's hand, "had been seen to flicker through 
the burning or close's row. | the ground window of a wooden building, and 

presently the whole city was astir. At first 
At day-wages the broker could not have two or three distracted men in leathern hats — 
toiled more painfully. Early and late he was they had been the first to discover it — ran up 
busy, with stick and" basket, in alley, highway, and down the adjacent streets, shouting at the 
and thoroughfare. He groped every kennel, top of their lungs, « Fire ! fire!" Then a score 
and questioned every heap in the ward. After or two of neighbors tumbled out of their beds, 
a shower he might be seen hovering about the and taking it up, with the scantiest possible 
street-pools like a buzzard. If he had been a apparel for a public appearance, hurried about 
picker from infancy he could not have driven the block echoing the cry. Then other dis- 
his trade with more diligence. He was es- traded people, bursting out at front doors, 
pecially careful to ply his business where he ; which went to after them with a crash, scram- 
would fall under the eye of certain gentlemen, i bling up from cellars or down from garrets 
pointed out to him by the vigilance of Mr. where they lodged, tore through the streets. 
Small, as possessing a talent for observation, Presently a reinforcement of men in leathern 
and an obliging disposition in coming forward, hats appeared, rushing in wherever there was 
which would render them very useful in the a lane, or square, or alley, and renewing the 
event of any little matter of Mr. Close's being shout, "Fire ! fire!" From various taverns and 
brought before the courts. This was a class rooms about the city where dancing had been 
of sharp-eyed small tradesmen, who were al- kept up to a late hour, certain young gentle- 
ways in their doors, or at the corner, or com- : men, casting off their coats and leaving them 
ing through a street, or passing to a ferry, or do- in charge of their fair partners, by which it 
ing something or other which enabled them to 'appeared, when the red shirts came to be dis- 
be eye-witnesses of more than half the stage- closed that they were volunteer firemen in dis- 
accidents, brawls, frays, and other street-inci- , guise, broke into the street, rushed distractedly 
dents of the whole city. As Fyler passed the about for a few minutes, until they had fixed 
doors of these vigilant observers, he would their gripe upon an engine-rope. when, setting 
place his basket on the ground, his crook lying forward, they aimed with many others in a like 
across it, and proceed to rap his forehead with plight, for the spot where the blaze was now 
great violence w r ith his knuckles; which per- mounting into a beacon-light, 
formance over, he would take up his basket and ! The throng and tumult — which deepened 
proceed to his work, knocking his brow stead- every minute — centred about a row of wooden 
ily through the day, at the rate of about three j buildings standing in a back yard. The flame 
dozen knocks to a square. There was, among ' had a sure hold upon his prey, anil coiled round 
his prospective witnesses, one in particular — ' striking it over and over ftgain, in some new 
a dealer in crockery — of such an extremely and vulnerable point with its longnea of lire. 
acute turn of mind, as to have been known, in ! Every bell in the metropolis Mas now sound- 
a case of manslaughter, tried at the Oyer and ' ing, and new forces came harrying into the 
Terminer, to have seen the blow struck, stand- 1 yard ; the engines clattered over the fence 
ing in his own shop-door and looking through which had been thrown down, and began to 
two bow-windows to the other side of a corner | take their order — the flame seemed to know it 

all, thrusting out a broad red face from the 
windows to welcome them, skipping with a 
nimble step up and down the stairs, and dan- 
cing about the roof, and in the very eaves for 
joy, to see so many friends about. The crowd 



where the affray had happened ; identifying 
the prisoner by the color of his hair. There 
was a valuable man for Mr. Close ! and when 
he came along the front of his shop the knock- 
ing was very violent and long-continued, and 

varied by a succession of lively leaps over the swelled till it overflowed, not only that yard, 
basket, back and forth, as it stood upon the but the next and the next, and all the fteigfc- 



ground. 

Ishmael, in the meantime, performed the 
part cast to him, by happening in the neighbor 



boring streets. 

The roofs, stoops, and windows, all about 
were filled with faces that glowed in the flame; 



hoods where Fyler plied his calling, and taking and even on the housetops, far away, a single 

occasion to point him out to various doctors, as figure, sometimes more, might be descried 

a worthy old gentleman (reduced in circum- standing out against the sky. The hoarse 

stances), a little beside himself, and whom he trumpets of the engineers Bounded — t lie hose 

would be sorry to see committing any violence, had been dropped in the cisterns — the; 

such as braining a child or the like. They thumping of engine-arms, a thin jet of muddy 



had furnished him with certificates of his con- 
dition, and, learning that he Mas a friend of 
the poor old gentleman's, begged him. in Heav- 
en's name, to take him straight to lVUevue. 

One night — Fyler had been missed from all 
his customary rounds that day — toward its 
close, there was a portent uous cry sounded 



Watei rose against the flame, and the tire 
bounded up, livelier than ever. The supply 

had given out. The rival was tried, and now 

they would have none on triumphantly, had 

not a discovery been made to the effect that all 

the tall num on the engines were wasting their 
strength in hoisting op certain short gentle- 



250 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



men and half-grown youths, who had fastened 
upon the engines, that they, the short gentle- 
men, might be in reach of the arms to do their 
part in bringing them down again. As soon 
as this was amended — by ejecting the short 
gentlemen and their associates, in a body, per- 
emptorily from the yard, from returning to 
which they were only restrained by the offi- 
cers' staves that began to ply about — they 
made head. The inmates now came hurrying 
out — men, women, and children — bearing in 
their arms some little worthless trifle, and cast- 
ing a frightened look back upon the burning 
row. There was one, a stout man, who car- 
ried in his arms, as tenderly as though it had 
been a child, a glass case shrouded in crape, 
which concealed, as might be guessed by such 
glimpses as the flame allowed, what seemed 
some child's toy or other. Then a lean man, 
with great staring eyes, came out with a run, 
and looked about him as though something had 
happened on a much grander scale than he 
had expected. As soon as this person had re- 
covered himself a little, he borrowed from one 
of the companies a couple of fire-buckets, fill- 
ing which constantly (although some consider- 
able rents in the sides and bottoms prejudiced 
his labors not a little), he did what he could, 
running back and forth, toward extinguishing 
the fire. They had now all escaped from 
the row except one ; and that one (the stout 
cobbler), instead of descending quietly like a 
Christian and good citizen, was seen tramping 
and dancing about the roof like a madman ; 
throwing his hat into the air and catching it, 
with other demonstrations of the wildest joy. 
He and the fire seemed to understand each 
other well. They shouted to him to come 
down, to little purpose ; they sent up huge jets 
of water, and these he shook from his ears like 
a great dog that liked the sport. Even a fire- 
man, who had acquired a great name by his 
prowess in bringing old men and women out 
of dormer windows, down the long ladder, and 
who had been constantly climbing up and down 
the same and calling to any that might be lurk- 
ing there, roasting privily, to come out — even 
he had gone to the very top round and be- 
sought the cobbler in vain. In his own good 
time, and when everybody thought there was 
no escape for him — a minute before the roof 
tumbled in — he came hand over hand down the 
lightning-rod, fixed against the gable, and 
reache.d the ground without a scratch. Once 
down, instead of employing his time in rescu- 
ing what he could, he devoted himself with ex- 
traordinary ardor to casting such articles of 
furniture, bedposts, chairs, or utensils, as he 
could lay hands on, into the flames; which, 
hurrying from point to point, he kept feeding 
as he would a hungry dog that had found great 
favor in his eyes for the very force of his appe- 
tite. So the cobbler kept the fire alive, and 
diminished more and more the stock of proper- 
ty whose distinctions it was his pleasure to 
loathe and help to level. 



Whenever a rafter yielded, or a heavy tim- 
ber fell in, a spare old figure, apparently avail- 
ing himself of the new light that flamed up the 
sky and fell back reflected on the earth, was 
seen stealing about, bearing a basket on his 
arm, and in his hand a crooked stick, with 
which he drew from the heaps small, charred 
bits of wood and worthless cinders, and filled 
his basket. 

At times he paused in his painstaking task, 
and going about to the circle nearest to the fire, 
he removed his hat, and, extending it to each 
in turn, begged piteously, both with look and 
voice, for alms — a penny only — a penny for a 
ruined man. Whenever they refused him, as 
they often did, not knowing him as the owner 
of the burning row, he would turn away and 
mutter in answer to questions which no one 
had addressed to him. 

" You are right, sir," he would say, " the 
man's leg was out of joint, and General Wash- 
ington thought a potato poultice just the thing." 
Then, going a few steps forward, he would 
pause at a heap, and begin counting cinders 
into his basket, as though it had been so much 
solid coin. Such as knew the broker heaved 
a sigh of compassion. Fyler Close was cer- 
tainly distracted — gone mad, beyond all con- 
troversy. No wonder, they said to them- 
selves ; such a blow — meaning the burning of 
his buildings — was enough to unsettle any 
man's senses. 

Ishmael, too, was on the ground, displaying 
a praiseworthy and astonishing activity in his 
endeavors to save what he could from the 
wreck, so as not to bankrupt the Phoenix com- 
pany at once ! Every other minute he was 
diving into the row, at the seeming peril of his 
neck, but taking good care to emerge at an 
early opportunity by means of an outlet on the 
other side, which he knew of, tarrying in the 
cellar only long enough to whistle such a tune 
as might lead the by-standers to scamper off, 
dropping whatever they had in their hands and 
protesting that there was a goblin in the vault. 
And when, at length, the flames reached the 
lightning-maker's loft, there were a dozen re- 
ports or more in succession, a broad sheet of 
all colors, blood-red and lightning-blue pre- 
dominating, shot up into the sky — there was an 
involuntary clapping of the hands on the part 
of the j uvenile portion of the crowd — Ishmael 
stood by, as ardent, but more secret, in his ap- 
plause than any. At the moment of the illu- 
mination — which had been duly announced in 
advance by the explosion — the lightning-ma- 
ker, who was still busy with his impracticable 
buckets, paused in his labors, and, looking up, 
a smile crossed his pallid face. His works had 
gone off to the satisfaction of his audience, and 
he was almost content, although his wife and 
children stood in the next yard with scarcely a 
rag to their backs. 

This brilliant display seemed to have a pe- 
culiar effect upon Mr. Close ; for he ran about 
while its brightness lasted with extraordinary 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



251 



nimbleness, pointing it out to every one in the 
yard, and saying, in a wild way, " That's the 
man, his name is John Augustus Jones, and 
he owes me one and ninepence for tapping his 
heels." 

How mad the poor broker was ! The fire 
kept burning, although it began to yield — roll- 
ing up smoke and flames, which, mixing to- 
gether, passed off in a turbid cloud toward the 
river. The night itself was dark and gusty ; 
and the flames, at one time driven hither and 
thither by the wind, laid eager hold of houses, 
and sheds, and churches, so that had not men 
flitting about with buckets driven them back, 
the whole neighborhood would have been in a 
blaze. 

But now it began to yield, and the broker 
moved about in its flickering light. He was 
suddenly accosted by a person of a bluff physiog- 
nomy, strengthened with huge black whiskers, 
who, taking him by the arm, would have drawn 
him quietly aside. Fyler turned, and, regard- 
ing him with a look of great steadfastness and 
severity, requested his arm to wither. The 
arm did not wither, but, on the contrary, seemed 
to acquire, by the very behest, a greater tena- 
city of gripe ; which, when Fyler discovered 
it, he attributed to the circumstance of his hav- 
ing touched it with the wrong hand. 

" This will do, old chap," said the other, 
transferring his hold to the collar and drawing 
the broker about with very little regard to the 
■established usages of society ; " we've had 
enough of this. These buildings were heavily 
insured, and you're wanted down town on bu- 
siness. Come, I know you well enough, Mr. 
Fyler Close." 

" You lie, sir, allow me to say," rejoined the 
broker, turning upon his assailant. " I am 
Barabbas, the king of the Jews, and my moth- 
er's Mary Scott, the clear-starcher, in Repub- 
lican alley. I am Barabbas, I tell you, and you 
owe me for the whiskers you've got on." 

" It won't do, Uncle," said the officer, " it's 
a capital fetch, but your primin's wet ; you 
must come." Whereupon, folding the broker's 
arm closely in his own, and putting on the air 
of his bosom friend, taking him out on a pleas- 
ure excursion against his will, he drew him 
along. Some of the by-standers, who had been 
moved by the affecting manner in which Fyler 
had conducted himself through the evening, 
murmured a little, but refrained from active in- 
terference. Ishmael — who had held himself 
aloof— and who, to tell the truth, had observed 
the eye of the black-whiskered man more than 
once fixed on his friend, during the fire, and 
who noticed that he went off and returned, 
whispering with another before he left (which 
observations there had been, however, no op- 
portunity to make known to Fyler), Ishmael 
now stole close by his side and pressed his 
hand. 

Fyler knew the hand, and felt its pressure. 
In that there was some hope yet. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE ROUND-RIMMERS' COMPLIMENTARY BALL. 

From the point where the peninsula of brick 
puts forth upon Chatham square, running or 
walking along its base on the Bowery, a mile 
or better out of town, and shooting along its 
oblique side on Division street, gliding gradu- 
ally off toward the East river at Scammel 
street, or thereabouts — lies the mighty province 
of East Bowery. And over all the region of 
East Bowery is spread — holding it in close 
subjection — the powerful clan of Round-rim- 
mers ; a fraternity of gentlemen, who, in round 
crape-bound hats, metal-mounted blue coats, 
tallow-smoothed locks, and with the terrible 
device of a pyramid, wrought of brassy but- 
tons, standing square upon their waistcoats, 
carry terror and dismay wherever they move. 
It isn't the crape-bound hats — giving out to 
the public, as they do, that the gentlemen who 
wear them are dead to the great world of 
watchmen and indefatigables, preachers and 
practitioners of peace and amity. Nor is it 
their strait-skirted blue coats, nor their brazen 
pyramids, that make them a terror to all ages 
and both sexes. Nor is it their independent 
carriage in public, and the extreme freedom 
with which they sway their arms. The true 
secret of their power rather lies in the circum- 
stance that they always rove in bands ; that, 
like the wolf, when one only is seen on the 
prowl, the herd may be guessed to be close at 
hand, ready to rush in and bear their brother 
through whatever peril he may encounter — 
from the clandestine kissing of a woman to the * 
tripping-up and desecration of the corporate 
person of the mayor. Now, it is well known 
that these classical gentry have haunts of their 
own, where no small-heeled boot or mustached 
face is permitted to intrude ; that they drink at 
their own resorts ; grow temperate and moral 
in churches or chapels of their own ; and that 
they break -down or pigeon- wing, where a white 
kid glove would, at a single wave, raise an in- 
surrection. 

And yet the Round-rimmers condescend to 
join the common world in certain of their ob- 
servances; they have committees among them- 
selves, where small men swell into great, by 
dint of volubility and intrigue. They make 
presentations, after their fashion, to distin- 
guished men ; and give complimentary balls, 
where they get a fever to a boiling pitch. It 
was, in fact, with these very objects in view, 
that the mighty brotherhood of Reund-riininers 
resolved on irradiating the head of Mi. Am- 
brose De Grand Val with the splendors of a 
grand complimentary ball, for the accuracy 
with which he had chalked their floors and 
mixed their punches, and the skill with which 
he had guided them and their fair partners 
through tlie mazes of a wintei's dances. Of 
course there was the calling of a meeting; the 



252 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



passage of resolutions — very tender and affect- 
ing as they touched upon the relations which 
had existed between the parties, and very flat- 
tering when they came to mention Mr. De 
Grand Val ; and the appointment of a commit- 
tee to preside over the arrangements. The 
arrangements were made; the night had ar- 
rived. 

The committee, on which were several reso- 
lute men, had determined on a hold stroke. 
They meant to have this known, through all 
coming time, as the ball — the grand compli- 
mentary ball, before which the lamps of all fu- 
ture balls should wax dim, and all future com- 
mittees of arrangement stand abashed. It 
should be a double-headed ball — a ball with 
two great, overwhelming attractions. One of 
them would be Mr. De Grand Val, the distin- 
guished beneficiary, whose head was already 
engraved on the ticket, with an entire wheat- 
sheaf in one corner, in lieu of the more regular 
accompaniment of a chaplet for his brow, and 
a pair of long-legged doves, billing each other, 
and going through a duet in the other. So far 
— good. In looking about for another, they 
determined, in the abstract, that it should be a 
politician — an eloquent, distinguished, and pop- 
ular politician, of prepossessing manners and I 
agreeable address. Puffer Hopkins, who had j 
won such honor in the late contest — who was j 
hand and glove with several of the leading \ 
members of the committee, was the very man ; j 
and Puffer was invited to be present, which he 
graciously acceded to, and requested to be in 
readiness by a certain hour, to be put in a hack j 
by a branch of the general committee, who ' 
would wait upon him to the ball. 

Puffer, who was not sorry to avail himself j 
of so capital an opportunity to extend his fame | 
among the members of a powerful body, was ap- j 
parelled and ready to a minute, having approach- [ 
ed as nearly as was prudent to the costume of his j 
constituents — he dared not adopt the pyramid, 
nor the flat locks, exactly, but he laid aside his | 
straps, and garnished his hat with a broad belt | 
of black riband. With the aid of the commit- 1 
tee, who called for him, he entered the car- 
riage, two aiding from within by seizing his j 
arms, and two from without by placing a hand 
against his person, and thrusting it gently for- 
ward with a respectful pressure. The supernu- 
merary committee-man — four inside — mount- 
ed the box with the driver ; the coach whirled 
away; and, at a rattling pace, they were soon 
at the mouth of the Bowery, or Vauxhall gar- 
dens — the royal pleasure-ground of the Round- 
rimmers — the extreme limit of their territory 
on the west — where the grand complimentary 
ball was to be given. Two large variegated 
lamps blazed in the front of the gate, to the 
admiration of one or two hundred observant 
boys ; the blast of a trumpet, evidently blown 
by a short-winded gentleman, from the inter- 
mittent nature of its peals, burst forth ; and 
Puffer, entering, was overwhelmed with the 
gorgeousness and splendor of the spectacle that \ 



broke upon him. In the first place, the gar 
den, to which he was a stranger, was filled 
with trees — which was a novelty in a New 
York public garden — some short and bushy, 
others tall and trim, hut actual trees. Then 
there were a thousand eyes or better lurking 
and glaring out in eveiy direction, in the shape 
of blue and yellow and red and white lamps, 
fixed among the trees and against the stalls. 
Then there was a fountain ; and then, through 
two rows of poplars, commanding a noble 
perspective of two white chimneytops in the 
rear, there stretched a floor — the ballroom-floor 
itself. He had no further opportunity for ob- 
servation, for the committee, hurrying him away 
lest he should be seen before the proper time 
for his presentation to the company had ar- 
rived, bore him to a small room aside, where he 
found a separate pitcher of lemonade and an 
honorary paper of sandwiches devoted to him- 
self, partaking of which, and being allowed 
time to smooth his locks and dust his pumps, 
he was carried forth into the air again. This 
time he was borne by the committee, who stuck 
close to his person, into a private path, so dark 
and shady that a deed of blood might have 
been quietly done upon him ; winding in and 
out among the shrubs whenever any of the com- 
pany — the more tender-hearted of whom affect- 
ed the place in couples — came in sight, until 
they reached the extremity of the garden oppo- 
site that at which they had entered. The chair- 
man of the committee gave a low whistle — 
there was a burst of music from the orchestra, 
who swarmed in a box midway among the trees 
like so many robin-redbreasts, and Puffer found 
himself upon a platform, his hat in his hand, 
his hand upon his waistcoat where his heart 
lay, bowing to a large assemblage of both sex- 
es, who stood gathered upon the floor waving 
handkerchiefs and shouting, shrieking, and 
hallooing, a whole menagerie of welcomes. An 
acute ear might have detected, in the pauses 
of this tumult, a sound arising in a remote 
quarter of the garden, resembling not a little 
the blows a stout-handed cooper deals upon his 
kegs, when he is anxious to fix or unfix their 
hoops ; thither two ambitious members of the 
committee, who had been unable to agree 
which should have the honor of attending Mr. 
Hopkins upon the platform, had, by the advice 
of mutual friends, withdrawn, and in a stall, 
by the light of three or four blue and yellow 
lamps, were proceeding to settle the point ac- 
cording to the established custom and usages 
of Round-rimmers. 

From his elevated position Puffer command- 
ed a view of the entire spectacle as it moved 
forward. Upon the floor, arranged in sets of 
eight each, which had been momentarily dis- 
turbed by his reception, and which were now 
re-formed, were a great number of young gen- 
tlemen in fancy pantaloons, of corduroy, white 
jean, and nankin, close at the knee and flaunt- 
ing at the ankle ; collars rolled tight under the 
chin over parti-colored neckerchiefs of em- 



PUFFER HOPKEVS. 



253 



phatic blue or red, the smooth locks cropped 
close behind, and the customary brass-mount- 
ed coats, ornamented with cauliflowers, or 
large monthly roses at the buttonholes, and at 
their sides an equal number of young ladies, 
some of whom were red-nosed and flat-breast- 
ed, and others of a rounded form and great 
beauty of feature, in dazzling calicoes, dan- 
gling earrings, that shone through the night 
like fireflies, kerchiefs of an equally emphatic 
hue spread upon their breast, and ringlets dis- 
posed upon their brow with a glossy smooth- 
ness that emulated their partners. The gen- 
tlemen stood with their arms a-kimbo on their 
hips ; the ladies doing homage to their lieges 
with faces turned smilingly upon them. The 
band struck up, the couples dashed off, throw- 
ing out limbs with an unexampled vigor in ev- 
ery direction — the gentlemen thumping the 
floor with their heels at every descent — the la- 
dies mounting into the air and whizzing about, 
till the dangling rings buzzed through the 
trees like fireflies on the wing. Sometimes a 
gentleman in the furor of his zeal, came spank- 
ing upon the floor; sometimes a lad y, losing bal- 
ance in the heat of her motion, dashed head- 
long into the ruffles of one of the stationary 
young gentlemen off duty, who were gathered 
in groups about the edges of the dance. Sud- 
denly there was an abrupt pause in the orches- 
tra, every instrument down to the triangle 
stood still, and the company, looking up in 
wonder of the cause, saw that the orchestra to 
a man was standing, and that every eye was 
fixed, with painful earnestness, upon the other 
end of the floor. The beneficiary — the illus- 
trious De Grand Val — had come in sight. He 
was in the hands of the committee ; and the 
committee were coming along as fast as the 
crowd that hung upon their progress would al- 
low them. Every now and then, a face, smi- 
ling and black-whiskered, was just visible for 
a moment and disappeared again in the throng. > 
Then a hand might be discovered touching the I 
smiling face and flying off from it, as in a sort i 
of playful or affectionate spasm. This by no 
means helped to abate the enthusiasm ; the or- 
chestra was excited beyond bounds. The trom- 
bone had climbed a tree, and was shaking down 
lamps and green caterpillars ever so fast, in a 
disordered state of mind brought on by over- 
excitement. With many pauses, by slow sta- 
ges, they had reached the head of the floor, 
where certain gentlemen, with blue ribands at 
their buttonholes, who had restrained them- 
selves with difficulty, rushed down the floor, 
and seizing Mr. De Grand Val, whose body- 
was springing back and forth, in a series of re- 
markable congees at the rate of forty a minute, 
tore him away and bore him to the foot of the 
platform, from which Puffer and his committee 
hung, watching their proceedings with a won- 
derful intensity of interest. De Grand Val was 
at length ijot upon the stairs, so that he was 
just above the heads ; and then when those im- 
mortal legs burst into full view, the ardor, 



which had kept in some sort of limits, burst 
into demonstrations of affectionate admiration 
that were touching to behold. The young 
gentlemen clapped their hands, and made in- 
ward comparisons with their own — the young 
ladies sighed and threw up their pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs. Once upon the stage, a most agree- 
able and imposing interview passed between 
the master and Puffer Hopkins, in which each 
bore himself to the entire satisfaction of the 
company. Mr. De Grand Val advanced a step 
or two, a gentleman in a blue riband suddenly 
appeared from the other side, advanced a step 
or two and paused. Something was coming ; 
for Mr. De Grand Val hung his head and pro- 
duced his pocket-handkerchief. 

There was a dead silence ; every eye in the 
place — even the cross-eyed waiter's that al- 
ways served the creams in one box and the 
spoons in the opposite — was fixed upon the 
gentleman in a blue riband. He had a small 
parcel in his left hand and his right was ad- 
vanced. 

" Respected sir," began the gentleman in the 
blue riband, securing the parcel with a fresh 
hold, " I beg, on behalf of my associates and 
self," here he looked hurriedly about to other 
gentlemen in blue ribands at his side, " to 
present to you the gift enclosed in the wrapper 
which I hold in my hand. The pair of satin 
smalls which I now present to you, are the 
medium through which we wish to convey to 
you our sense of the delicate and distinguished 
manner in which you have performed the 
arduous duties you have undertaken for our 
benefit and our advancement. We present 
them to you as they came from the hands of 
that ingenious artist, James Jones of 143 Can- 
non street, unaltered and unsullied. We give 
them to you as emblematical of the many hours 
we have passed together in similar and kindred 
garments, beguiling life of its tediousness and 
dissipating the midnight winter-strained. The 
smalls are three feet in length, have two feet 
six inches breadth of beam and front, and 
carry one person. Other causes than the mere 
desire of seeing you clothed, have led to the 
construction of the great work now before us ; 
they have been built not only to warm your 
limbs, but also to gratify the eyes of your 
affectionate scholars and friends. The im- 
portance of having the seams made secure and 
the buttons well fastened, was awfully demon- 
strated in the case of Mr. Wail, whose panta- 
loons, being inadequately constructed, burst 
open, as you may recollect, the season before 
last, in the presence of one hundred and eighty 
scholars, in no less than five distinct rents. The 
late Mr. Larkin was also a sufferer in the same 
way; but not to quite the same extent. In 
presenting you these smalls I wish to call your 
attention to some of their peculiar and charac- 
teristic features. Examine them— they are not 
breeches, they are not tiowsers, they are not 
slope. They have neither open-bottoms nor 
straps ; but what is most singular, they have 



254 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



neither a hind pocket nor side pocket, not even i 
a place to put a watch in. I desire now to ex- | 
press an individual wish. As boy and man I J 
have witnessed the devotion and personal j 
sacrifices with which you have flown about ! 
your ball-rooms, rending your linen for the 
pleasure and gratification of your fellow-citi- 
zens. But I have witnessed too, with sorrow, 
what individual mortification and discomfort 
you, with others, have brought upon yourself 
by sitting thoughtlessly down on dusty chairs 
and unclean benches. The wish which I 
ardently offer is, that while you employ these 
smalls in dancing to the delight of our whole \ 
community, they may be associated in your , 
mind only with what is pure and agreeable, dis- \ 
daining any familiarities with Windsor soap and 
washing-tubs-. In conclusion, I take the liber- j 
ty on behalf of our company generally, in say- j 
ing that we feel ourselves honored by the 
presence of Puffer Hopkins, Esq., our distin- ' 
guished friend and fellow-citizen. "We do not ! 
show him sky-rockets and bengola lights, but j 
we show him that James Jones has been busy j 
in the arts of peace with a view to promote the 
comfort of our beloved preceptor, Mr. De 
Grand Val. Accept these smalls." 

The gentleman in the blue riband advanced 
a step or two again, Mr. De Grand Val like- j 
wise advanced a step or two. Mr. De Grand | 
Val was in possession of the parcel. He cast j 
his eye down upon the wrapper, then he turned 
enchantingly and looked about with a compre- 
hensive smile which opened his whiskers and I 
disclosed his teeth and embraced all parties j 
present, on the platform and off, both sexes, ' 
and even an interloper who stood gazing from j 
the remotest end of the floor. There was a ! 
dead silence again. Mr. D« Grand Val was 
about to reply. 

" Ladies and Gentlemen," said Mr. De 
Grand Val deeply moved, " I accept this token 
in the spirit in which it is given. I regard it, 
and shall always regard it, as an evidence of ! 
your devoted attachment, tried principles and i 
prompt payments, as long as I live. When- 
ever I look at them, whenever I wear them, I ! 
shall call to mind the spirit with which you 
have availed yourself of my instructions, the ' 
promptitude with which you have cashed my i 
quarterly bills. They and I shall be insepar- | 
able, provided, as I have an abiding conviction, ' 
they fit. They will serve — how happily !— to ; 
recall to me the purity of the } r oung ladies . 
whom I have instructed, the manliness of the ' 
young gentlemen." Here there began to be a ' 
movement of applause. " By saying this, how- 
ever, ladies and gentlemen, I do not mean that 
I shall always wear these satin smalls. No, 
no. God forbid that I should ever be seen 
performing the ordinary duties of life in these 
precious garments, your affectionate gift. Dis- 
tant be the time when it shall be said that Am- 
brose De Grand Val was known to have had 
on his smalls riding a trotting match on the 
avenue, or mixing slings at Fogfire hall, or 



climbing a sloop's mast on the East river. I 
shall reserve them, ladies and gentlemen — and 
I think you have anticipated me in this" state- 
ment — for more select and dignified occasions. 
I think I may venture to wear them at a wed- 
ding ?" — " You may," from a large portion of 
the audience — "but not on a fishing excur- 
sion ?" — " No, no, shrimps and salt-water is 
fatal !"— « On the shady side of the Bowery ?" 
— " To be sure !" — " But not to church— that 
wouldn't do." And Mr. De Grand Val laughed 
aloud as much as to say, "That's a good one !" 
" But, ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid I shall 
be compelled to make an exception — a single 
exception — as to the rule I have laid down for 
myself in the use of these smalls. I have a 
friend, ladies and gentlemen, a dear friend, a 
former pupil of mine — known to some of you 
— who, in a moment of unrestrained hilarity, 
playfully thrust a caseknife, which he happen- 
ed to have about him, a couple of inches or so 
into the body of a thick-headed watchman ; 
this trifling circumstance has called the atten- 
tion of the state toward him ; the state wants 
him up the river, and when he's called for he 
asks, as a favor, that I will go up with him. I 
know how gratifying it will be to our friend to 
see me in these smalls, and now, ladies and 
gentlemen, as a parting favor, I ask to be per- 
mitted to use them on that occasion !" At this 
there was a universal response, " In course" 
— " By all means" — and so forth, to which Mr. 
De Grand Val bowed in his best manner, and 
ended by laying his hand upon his breast, and 
uttering in a heart-broken voice, " Ladies and 
gentlemen, I thank you !" There was scarce- 
ly a dry eye in the garden. At the moment 
when Mr. De Grand Val was discovered with 
the wrapper under his arm, descending the 
platform with the committee, twelve cotillions 
— spread along the floor — burst into a dance 
expressive of tumultuous joy. Puffer kept his 
station on the platform, surveying the dance, 
his thumbs thrust, politician-wise, in the arm- 
holes of his vest, and his eye ranging along 
from set to set — when suddenly it came upon 
an object which fixed it as firmly in his head as 
if it had been an eye of stone. A dark-eyed 
young lady, only three sets from the stage, of 
great personal attractions, stood facing a great 
sturdy-shouldered fellow who seemed to be her 
partner in the dance, (although Puffer would 
not believe it), and where the light of more 
than a dozen lamps fell upon her face. He 
could not be mistaken. It was — it must be the 
dark-eyed young lady he had met at Mr. Fish- 
blatt's entertainment. He stepped from the 
platform and lounged down the floor in com- 
pany with a member of the committee. He 
thought he would like to confirm his impres- 
sions by her voice ; in that he could not err, 
for he recollected, now that his head swayed 
that way, there were tones in it that could not 
be counterfeit or delusive. 

" Fine weather for young ducks," said the 
dark-eyed young lady. 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



255 



vC Not bad neither for heifers and bullocks," 
said the sturdy-shouldered young gentleman. 
" Speaking of bullocks, if Bill Winship don't 
keep inside his chalk I'll cut his plumb for 
him." And he glanced at a young gentleman 
of a brawny build, who was working his way 
with might and main, through a complicated 
figure. 

" Bill ! — Bill Winship, come over here !" 
cried the dark-eyed young lady across the floor, 
as soon as Mr. Winship had achieved his 
position again. " Joe Marsh's distributing 
knuckle soup to-night, and he wants you to 
take a sup." 

"Never mind quite yet," cried the sturdy- 
shouldered young gentleman, Mr. Marsh him- 
self; " only don't you throw your legs quite so 
much ox-fashion or knockin'-down time '11 come 
afore to-morrow daylight ! That's all !" 

The dark-eyed young lady and the sturdy- 
shouldered young gentleman laid their heads 
together and conferred in a dialect which was 
in a great measure unintelligible to Puffer 
Hopkins, but having reference, as he saw by 
their glances, to the young gentleman across 
the floor who kept dancing beyond his chalk in 
spite of the friendly warning of Mr. Marsh. 
As soon as he could address the young lady, 
without rashly invading the privacy of her in- 
terview with Mr. Joe Marsh, Puffer came for- 
ward and, begging her hand for the next dance, 
took the place of the sturdy-shouldered Marsh, 
who withdrew, tugging very fiercely at the ties 
of his neckcloth, evidently meditating sum- 
mary death, either to himself or his brawny 
opposite. The dark-eyed young lady imme- 
diately entered upon conversation with Puffer; 
referred to the entertainment at Mr. Fishblatt's, 
not forgetting Alderman Crump nor Mr. Blin- 
ker; touched pleasantly upon their wanderings 
on the way to her residence ; came down to the 
present ball, glanced at its striking points, and 
all in very chaste, appropriate, and elegant 
language, which startled Puffer not a little 
when contrasted with her discourse with Mr. 
Joseph Marsh. Who was the young lady ? 
What was she ? There was evidently a mys- 
tery about her. She had two tongues like the 
double-headed heifer at the show ; and now 
that he looked more closely, she was dressed in 
a style quite as singular and composite. A 
part of her dress — her gown and shawl, folded 
over the breast, were in the very height of the 
Ilound-rimmer's fashion ; but, then, about her 
neck there was a delicate necklace of pearl 
and her hair hung from her brow, in fair glossy 
curls that leaped like the young tendrils of the 
vine in the spring breeze, at every motion of 
the dance. 

The ball went on with unabated spirit. Puf- 
fer Hopkins and his partner bounded forward, 
chassed, dos-a-dos'd, and balanced with a vi^or 
and accuracy that were the delight of the 
whole set. 

" I balance for you," said the dark-eyed young 



lady, as soon as it was their turn to rest. " I 
chassez and forward across for my father." 

What could this mean ? The mystery was 
deepening and the dark-eyed young lady bright- 
ened into clearer and fairer beauty every 
minute. He ventured to ask if her father was 
in the gardens. Oh, no ; he was at home 
studying the gazetteer. There was no oppor- 
tunity for further questions, for at that moment 
a figure encased in white came bounding up the 
floor — the dancers opening and forming a line 
on either side and clapping their hands with 
great earnestness as he came along. There 
seemed to be no point or pitch at which you 
could say, the excitement is at its height. De 
Grand Val had come upon the floor (having 
privily withdrawn for that very purpose) in his 
presentation satin smalls ! How well they 
fitted him ! What a figure ! What motions ! 

De Grand Val begged them, if they loved 
him, to re-form at once — he couldn't bear to see 
them idle — and taking his place at the head of 
the first set, at the very top of the floor, he 
struck into the dance. Were there ever such 
leaps, such pirouettes, such graceful turnings 
of a partner, such pigeon-wings ! Every eye 
was upon him, and when, in the enthusiasm of 
art he sprung into the air, tossing his skirts al- 
most over his ears, there was visible on the 
waistband of his smalls, an inscription worked 
in with black silk, " Presented to Ambrose De 
Grand Val by his affectionate and admiring 
pupils" — there was another thrill, deeper, 
stronger, more like electricity than any yet ! 
The excitement was now at its height. The 
orchestra was in a state of extraordinary fer- 
vor; the base-drum roared and rumbled out of 
all bounds ; the violin snapped a string in its 
excessive agitation and hurry; the trombone 
and triangle were beside themselves and 
wouldn't keep in tune. The young ladies 
threw off* their kerchiefs upon their arms — the 
gentlemen their coats upon the bushes and 
benches behind them, displaying red under- 
shirts, and a great variety of hoists, embellish- 
ed sometimes with a great black heart of 
leather in the middle, or with mystical creeping 
vines, breaking out all over in sheepskin blos- 
soms. At intervals the company rushed down 
from the floor into the stalls at the sides of the 
garden, and falling upon various refreshments 
there set out, acquired so much vigor as to re- 
turn to the stage in astonishing force of wind 
and limb. At the end of every third dance or 
so, the gentlemen, resigning all care of their 
partners, inarched in a body to t ho bar at the 
other end of the garden, fronting the lloor, 
where the bar-tenders, standing in a row in 
their sleeves, wrought constant miracles in the 
mixing of sliiiirs, punches, and cobblers. And 
so they kept it. up by the hour, beyond mid- 
night, when some slight abatement in the spir- 
it of the entertainment began to show itself. 

F-very now and then a set Tell oil', one by one, 
until there were only a few Stragglers about 



256 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



the floor, kept together hy almost superhuman 
exertions on the part of the gentlemen in the 
blue ribands. At last there was no one left 
but the gentlemen in blue ribands themselves, 
who wandered hither and thither, gathering up 
shawls, combs, and other stray articles aban- 
doned by their owners. 

The lights were out or smoking in their last 
remains/the waiters asleep upon the benches, 
and the great De Grand Val roamed about the 
paths and bowers of the garden, in his satin 
smalls, unattended and unobserved. 

Puffer— to whom she had been courteously 
resigned by Mr. Joseph Marsh, who had attend- 
ed her thither, and who went off in search of Mr. 
Bill Winship, the obnoxious dancer — took the 
dark-eyed young lady's arm in his, and had long 
ago set forth. He knew the way now, and it 
was a very different one — so it seemed to him, 
although it remained untouched — than when he 
travelled it before. The crossings were as 
broad, the roads as crooked, the squares as 
long; but how miserably short and narrow, 
how provokingly straight they seemed! It 
would have been a pleasure to him to have got 
into Doyer street and wandered about all night 
long. The door was reached before he had 
thought of it; an old woman came with a 
nimbleness, the very recollection of which took 
his breath away, and then, when the dark-eyed 
young lady entered in, how cruelly quick she 
was in closing it, with her ugly old face in her 
very hood, and hurrying her away. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

MR. FISHBLATT's NEWS-ROOM. 

Through all of Puffer's dreams that night 
there glided a graceful form ; a pair of bright 
dark eyes glanced hither and thither like 
meteors, in all the motions of the dance ; some- 
times he was moving by its side, sometimes it 
parted from him, and when she left his hand, 
ah ! how keen a pang shot through his heart ! 
But gliding, and glancing, and full of cheerful 
images as were his dreams — whatever the mazes, 
whatever the turns, the pirouettes, the long 
country dances, the perspective always closed 
with the fair dancer's wearing a great green 
hood, and an old woman's head thrust inside, 
chattering and bobbing up and down. He had 
danced a score or more cotillons, reels, and flings 
— always with the same ending, when, at length, 
the old head seemed somehow to get fixed upon 
the young shoulders, the old body without ahead 
galloped off, and the fair young form was left, 
chasseing, double-headed, among the trees. 
This was too much for mortal patience to bear, 
and Puffer waked up. His first business, 
when he had fairly recovered himself, was to 
recall the dark-eyed young lady, in all her 
agreeable proportions, one by one, and replace 
her in his mind as she had been when he had 



stretched himself to sleep. Lately as he had 
looked upon her, it was something of an effort; 
at one lime he would fix her in a graceful at- 
titude bending forward to move, her head 
slightly turned back toward him, but then the 
eyes, or the motion of the arm, or the smile 
that had played upon her lip, would escape him, 
and he would begin again. He went puzzling 
on in this way, even till he was dressed, though 
this did not prevent his appareling himself 
with great skill and judgment ; drawing out, 
from the very bottom of a drawer, where it had 
been laid religiously aside for some select occa- 
sion, a bright blue neckcloth; arraying his new 
buff vest, which he had worn to the ball to 
marked advantage, and disposing of his hand- 
some blue coat so that every wave and plait 
should tell. With the two tasks, his mind, it 
must be confessed, was sufficiently engaged; 
and when he had laid the last lock in its exact 
place upon his brow, and succeeded in recall- 
ing the dark-eyed young lady, in all her beauty, 
even down to the neat shoe-tie (that his 
dreams had not forgotten), it came into his 
head, as opportunely as one could wish, that 
he ought to go down to Mr. Fishblatt's at whose 
entertainment he had first met the dark-eyed 
young lady, and have a little gossip, just by 
way of relief! The day had, in this way, 
glided past dinner-time, and he thought the pleas- 
ing idleness of the morning had fairly purchased 
the afternoon as an extension of his holyday. 

When he reached the house of Mr. Fishblatt, 
the door, in compliment to the pleasant weath- 
er, stood wide open ; and Puffer, having estab- 
lished a sufficient friendship to warrant it, pro- 
ceeded at once to the small supplemental room 
in the rear, where Mr. Halsey Fishblatt held 
his lair. Here he found Mr. Fishblatt in his 
arm-chair, holding, in a firm gripe, a wet sheet, 
which he regarded with a steady gaze. At his 
side there was a wooden stool, on the top of 
which lay a pile of damp newspapers. The 
reading of the wet sheet seemed to move Mr. 
Fishblatt greatly ; his teeth were firmly fixed, 
and a thick sweat, as though it had steamed up 
from the newspaper, stood upon his brow. His 
attention was so entirely engrossed, that not- 
withstanding the unusual gloss and neatness 
of Puffer's apparel, he merely nodded to him as 
he came in, and, unfixing one of his arms, 
waived him to a seat. As soon as one side of 
the paper was finished — very little, apparently, 
to the satisfaction of Mr. Fishblatt — he gave 
the sheet a gentle shake, and, letting it fall 
into a current of air which set in from the en- 
try, he turned a leaf, and folding it back, fixed 
himself upon the fresh side. 

Glancing aside not once, but ranging up and 
down the solid columns as steadily as a plough- 
horse in a furrow, Mr. Fishblatt finished his 
acre or half acre of print. 

" This is certainly an astonishing circum- 
stance," he exclaimed, folding his paper, lay- 
ing it upon his knee, and smiting it with his 
open palm, breathing now for the first time 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



257 



freely ; " an astonishing circumstance : on 
Monday, Busts of the Bladder made that pun- 
gent sally, and here it's Saturday, and no re- 
joinder from Flabhy — what can this mean ?" 

At this moment a series of shouting boys 
streamed by in the street, whose voices, at 
their very top, were broken in passing through 
the long hall and up a flight of stairs. Mr. 
Fishblatt, however, whose ear was better prac- 
tised, started up with a stern smile upon his 
face, and proceeding to the stairhead, called 
down. Shuffling feet were heard in answer, 
and tossing down a coin of small dimensions 
upon the entry-floor, merely said, " The Pun- 
cheon," and returned to his seat. In a second 
or two the frowzy-headed servant-girl, with 
her hair all abroad, appeared at the door, and 
presented to him a fresh sheet, which he fas- 
tened upon with great eagerness. 

"As I thought," said Mr. Fishblatt, glancing 
rapidly down the columns. " An * Extra Pun- 
cheon,' pretending to give late news from the 
Capitol, but containing, in reality, Flabby's 
long-expected reply. Capital ! capital " cried 
Mr. Fishblatt, as he hurried on ; " Flabby's 
called Busts a drunken vagabond, in the Pun- 
cheon of Wednesday-week ; Busts called Flab- 
by a hoary reprobate, in Monday's Bladder, and 
now Flabby calls Busts a keg of Geneva bitters 
— says the bung's knocked out and the staves 
well coopered. Capital! this alludes to a 
thrashing in front of the Exchange, in which 
Busts had his eye blacked and a couple of ribs 
beaten in. Give us plenty of newspapers !" 
pursued Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, starting from 
his chair in the furor of his enthusiasm. " They 
make a people happy and intelligent and vir- 
tuous. The press, sir, the press is the palla- 
dium of liberty, and the more palladiums we 
have, the freer we are — of course. See here, 
sir, here's a big palladium, and here's a little 
palladium." At this he held forth to Puffer's 
gaze, first the mammoth sheet, and then the 
dwarf, and brandishing them in the air, pro- 
ceeded : " This" — referring to the small sheet 
— " is edited by a couple of overgrown boys in 
Williamsburg, who do their own press-work — 
this by an undergrown man in Ann street, who 
does his thinking on the other side of the At- 
lantic. Never mind that — give us more. This 
people can never be free, Mr. Hopkins, tho- 
roughly and entirely free, till every man in 
the country edits a newspaper of his own; till 
every man issues a sheet every morning, in 
which he's at liberty to speak of every other 
man as he chooses. The more we know 
each other, the better we'll like each other — 
so let us have all the private affairs, the busi- 
ness transactions, and domestic doings of every 
man in the United States, set forth in a small 
paper, in a good pungent style, and then we 
may begin to talk of the advancement of the 
human race. That's what I call the cheap 
diffusion of knowledge ; a pennyworth of scan- 
dal on every man's breakfast-table, before he 
goes to business." 

R 



Mr. Fishblatt having refreshed himself and 
his hearer with a tumbler each of lemonade, 
from the mantel (the probable remains of a 
last night's entertainment), was about to re- 
sume, when he was brought to a pause by the 
sudden entrance of the frowzy-haired servant- 
girl, who brought him a parcel from the post- 
man who was distributing the southern and 
western mail. 

" Ah ! what have we here ?" said Mr. Fish- 
blatt, taking the parcel from her hand. " ' The 
Nauvoo Bludgeon,' 'Potomac Trumpet,' 'West- 
ern Thundergust,' something rich in each, I 
will warrant. ' The corporal,' says the Nau- 
voo Bludgeon," pursued Mr. Fishblatt, reading 
from the newspapers, as he unfolded them; 
" < the corporal, we are glad to see, has resumed 
his editorial chair. There are few men in the 
press in the United States, that could be better 
spared than Tomkins ; there is a raciness about 
his paragraphs, his humor is so delicate, his 
good taste so marked and prominent in all he 
writes. In a word, we couldn't spare Tomp- 
kins.' " Mr. Fishblatt unfolded another paper, 
remarking that the corporal edited the Potomac 
Trumpet — and here it was, a day's date later 
than the Bludgeon. " « Our friend Smith of the 
Bludgeon,' " continued Mr. Fishblatt, reciting 
from the Trumpet, " < has our thanks for the 
handsome manner in which he has alluded to 
our recovery from a critical sickness. Smith, 
we owe you one, and will pay you as soon as 
you are on your back — if not sooner. We 
were passing down Market lane, yesterday, 
when we heard a voice. < Tompkins,' said the 
voice ; ' Hollo !' We looked up — it was Grigs- 
by — our old friend Grigsby, of Clambake point. 
He understood us, and we passed on. Do you 
take, Smith V » 

Having despatched these, Mr. Fishblatt 
came to the Western Thundergust. The Thun- 
dergust was in a furious rage ; they had been 
purloining his jokes, and he wouldn't tolerate 
it any longer. 

" We have submitted long enough," said the 
Thundergust, " to the unbridled plunderings of 
the Nauvoo Bludgeon and the Potomac Trumpet. 
We mean to put a stop to it ; and, to begin at the 
beginning, we would like to ask the man of the 
Bludgeon where he got that phrase, < In a word, 
we couldn't spare Tompkins V Does he recol- 
lect the Thundergust of Wednesday, the 15th 
of July ? If he doesn't, we can refresh his 
memory. ' In a word,' said we, speaking of 
an article of furniture in our late office, * we 
couldn't spare our cedar-wood desk.' There — 
we think we have pinned the Bludgeon man to 
the wall, and now we'll dispose of him of the 
Trumpet, by suggesting whether it wouldn't be 
better for him to buy a copy of the world of 
Mr. Joseph Miller at once, rather than be at 
the trouble of stealing his jokes from all the 
newspapers in the country ? Wo only lUfgMt 
it; — while we are on the point, wo inidn M 
well say that the anecdote of Gfigsby, in the 
last Trumuet was stolen as it stands, from the 



258 



PUFFEK HOPKINS. 



first number of this paper, where the reader 
will find it printed at the head of the first 
column of the second page. Paste-boy, scratch 
off the ' Trumpet' — it'll be your turn next, Mr. 
Bludgeon ; so you're on your good behavior !" 

Just then, and before Mr. Fishblatt could 
dive deeper into the beauties of the press, an in- 
differently-dressed gentleman in a heated face 
and damp hair, rushed in, stumbling at the 
threshold in his haste, and pitching forward, 
but taking the precaution to knock his hat 
tight with one hand as he stumbled. 

" Heavens and earth !" exclaimed the damp- 
haired stranger, as soon as he recovered him- 
self, " it's passed !" 

" It is ?" echoed Mr. Fishblatt, in a hollow 
and sepulchral tone. 

" It is, sir," responded the stranger, wildly. 

" What ! you don't say, sir," continued Mr. 
Fishblatt, gazing steadily at him, " that the 
bill for clearing the navigation of the upper 
Wabash has passed ?" 

The stranger did ; and he had in his hat an 
accurate report of the debate. It had been 
brought in by special express for the Junk Bot- 
tle. An express-rider, by-the-by, had broken 
his neck in coming through New Jersey, and 
the messenger had pitched into the office of the 
Junk Bottle with such precipitation with his 
parcel, as to have struck the senior editor 
where he knocked all the wind out of him ; so 
that they needn't look for any leader to-mor- 
row. He would take off his hat and they 
would' get at the particulars. The damp-haired 
stranger did so ; set his hat upon the floor — 
planted one foot upon a chair-seat near by, 
and bending forward, so that the sweat dropped 
on the paper as he read, proceeded to furnish 
the following account, which was heralded in 
the Junk Bottle with the portrait of a small fat 
cherub, flying at the top of his speed, his 
cheeks distended, and a trumpet at his mouth, 
from which issued the word " Postscript !" in a 
loud, bold type. It was from the Washington 
correspondent of the Junk Bottle. 

" I can hardly hold the quill in my hand with 
joy at the news I am about to communicate — 
news that will, I am satisfied, thrill the whole 
country from one end to the other. The bill 

FOR CLEARING THE NAVIGATION OF THE UPPER 

Wabash was passed last night between eleven j 
and twelve o'clock, after a most animated and 
stormy debate, in which the emissaries of pow- 
er put forth their utmost strength. Their sub- 
terfuges, their cavils, and cries of < Order' were, 
however, of no avail. The bill had a clear ma- 
jority of five, and the country is safe. Of the 
true-hearted men who distinguished themselves 
on the side of justice and patriotic principle, 
Peter Alfred Brown, of Massachusetts, was 
pre-eminently conspicuous. He was seen ev- 
erywhere during the debate, animating, exhort- 
ing, encouraging — from his place in the house ; 
sometimes, in the energy of his extraordinary 
powers, standing up in his chair, and sometimes 
addressing the house from his desk-top, where 



he took his station at last, and maintained it 
for better than an hour, during which he de- 
livered one of the most remarkable and won- 
derful speeches of the present epoch. There 
are few men, in any age or country, to be com- 
pared with Peter Alfred Brown. I subjoin a 
hasty outline of a few of the most striking pas- 
sages in the debate. 

" Mr. Buffum, of Kentucky, in opening the 
discussion, remarked that the country was in 
imminent danger, much more imminent than 
he was willing to confess. The people ex- 
pected much and they got nothing. A crisis 
had arrived which must be met. He need not 
describe to them the present condition of the 
whole region around the upper Wabash. It 
was little better than a desert ; trade, by the 
obstruction of navigation, had fallen off to noth- 
ing — the grass in the neighboring meadows 
was four feet high — vessels of transportation 
were sticking, absolutely sticking in the mud 
at the wharves, and the cartmen went about 
the streets whistling dirges and psalm-tunes. 

" Mr. Woddie, of South Carolina, who rose in 
reply to Mr. Buffum, would not answer for the 
consequences, if the bill before the house 
should become a law. His (Mr. W.'s) con- 
stituents were in a highly inflamed and excited 
state of mind on the subject of the proposed 
clearing. If the upper Wabash (they asked) 
was once made navigable, what would become 
of the Little Pedee ? Why, it would sink to 
a third-rate stream, and in the place of the 
honorable gentleman's whistling cartmen, they 
would have a stagnant marsh, full of musical 
bullfrogs. He (Mr. W.) respected the consti- 
tution of the country, and so did his constitu- 
ents ; but, should this bill pass, he could not 
promise that a flag, with some terrible device, 
would not be seen flying, in twenty-four hours 
after the news, from the walls of Charleston. 

" It was at this juncture, that Peter Alfred 
Brown, of Massachusetts, rose. Every eye 
was upon him ; and, without faltering for a 
moment, he entered upon the subject. He 
showed clearly, in a masterly effort of better 
than two hours, that the constitution had man- 
ifestly contemplated the object in the proposed 
bill. He showed, so that the blindest and most 
jaundiced eye could not fail to see it, that the fra- 
mers had provided for the very contingency that 
had now arisen. He would not occupy the time 
of the house in pointing out the express clause in 
the constitution covering the present case ; 
but he proved, by an ingenious and elaborate 
train of reasoning, in something less than an 
hour, that the entire scope of that instrument 
went to such an effect. In a peroration, never 
surpassed in the house, he begged them to stand 
by the constitution. His arms trembled, as he 
held up to their view a printed copy which he 
held in his hand ; and when he sat down, the 
universal conviction was that he could not be 
answered. Notwithstanding this feeling, he 
was immediately followed by Marc Anthony 
Daggers, the notorious member from Virginia, 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



259 



who poured out upon the head of the illustri- 
ous Brown the vials of his wrath. There was 
no epithet of denunciation he did not heap up- 
on the head of that distinguished man. ' Sir,' 
said Daggers, turning so as to face Mr. Brown, 
who sat complacent and unmoved, writing a 
letter at his desk, ' sic, you are a disgrace and 
a contumely to the American Congress ; a ped- 
lar of logic, and a wholesale dealer in false- 
hood and fable. Where you were born, sir, 
the land, in sympathy with you, breeds noth- 
ing but copperheads and toadstools ; the soil is 
rocky as your bosom, steril as your brain.' 
Here there were loud cries of order, but Dag- 
gers went on without heeding them in the least. 
Brown was a buffalo, ready to plunge his horns 
into the vitals of his country ; he was a vol- 
canic fire, a monster, a doting idiot, and a po- 
litical mountebank. 

"At nine o'clock in the evening, to which 
hour they had been kept listening to the tirade 
of Mr. Marc Anthony Daggers, Mr. Blathering, 
of Missouri, obtained the floor. His effort was 
in every way worthy of his matured powers 
and reputation. For fourteen years he (Mr. 
B.) had labored, single-handed and alone, to 
obtain justice for the citizens of Indiana, Illi- 
nois, and Missouri. For fourteen years he had 
cried at the top of his lungs to the people of 
the United States, to render their right to the 
residents on the Wabash. The Wabash was 
still obstructed, and if he, like Curtius of old, 
could, by casting himself headlong in, reverse 
the spell and open the river, he was ready, at 
any moment, for the sacrifice. All he asked 
was an hour's notice, and an opportunity to 
say ' Farewell,' a last farewell, to his wife and 
children. 

" The upper Wabash, Mr. Speaker, is a 
stream rising in the interior of Indiana, at 
about the latitude of 40°, &c. (Here he pro- 
duced several maps, and quoted freely from 
two piles of books before him, which occupied 
about an hour and a half delightfully.) He 
closed with an appeal to the house, which sur- 
passed anything ever heard before within its 
walls. I need only give you the concluding 
sentence, to show you the magnificent stamp of 
the whole. 

" * If I were now standing upon the summit 
of the Chippewayan mountains, instead of the 
floor of this house, and were suddenly and un- 
expectedly seized with the icy pangs of death, 
— if I saw that my last houi had come, and 
that but one more breath was left me to draw, 
I would say with that last breath, so that I 
might be heard by every man in America, 
" Clear the Wabash ! in Heaven's name ca- 
reen its mighty bottom, and let its waters flow 
in a mercantile tide into the Ohio at Shaw- 
neetown, and into the Mississippi at Big 
8 wain p !" ' 

" The bill was engrossed at twenty minutes 
past eleven, and at twelve was sent to the sen- 
ate for concurrence. There was an unexam- 
pled rush toward the stalls in the lobby and 



the hotels on the Avenue, the moment the 
house was adjourned. This tended somewhat 
to allay the excitement. Thank God, the 
country is safe !" 

" Curse that Junk Bottle !" cried Mr. 
Fishblatt, who had watched closely the read- 
ing of the Washington letter, " it's always 
bringing unpleasant news by express in ad- 
vance of the mail. Our trade is ruined, sir. 
New York is a dead herring. All Kentucky, 
Indiana, Illinois, will flow into the Wabash, 
the Wabash into the Ohio, the Ohio into the 
Mississippi, and the Mississippi makes a mouth 
1 at New Orleans. Where does that bring us ? 
Not an Indiana turkey, nor a Kentucky ham, 
I nor an Illinois eg^ reaches the New York mar- 
ket henceforth for ever. In ten years you may 
expect to see this mighty metropolis a heap of 
ruins, and auctioneers going about knocking 
; down the rubbish in lots to suit purchasers. 
\ What do they mean by passing such bills ?" 
! Mr. Fishblatt turned to Puffer ; the damp- 
I haired stranger, released from the steadfastness 
' of his gaze, hastily resumed his hat — to the 
| crown of which he restored his paper — and es- 
j caped to dispense his news in some other quar- 
| ter of the town. Purler, who had stood aside, 
, pondering in his own way, on the subject of 
[ ihe upper Wabash, and, turning it about in his 
; mind till he got it in a light that pleased him, 
looked at Mr. Fishblatt, but made no answer. 
But when Mr. Fishblatt added, " I'll go and 
see my friend, Mr. Samuel Sammis, and have 
this explained — will you join me, Puffer V he 
started from his revery and said it was the very 
best thing they could do. In a moment he 
threw down the newspaper, with which his 
fingers had been toying, held his hat in his 
hand, and was ready to issue forth on the in- 
stant. Now, this alacrity on the part of Puf- 
fer — must we confess it ? — was owing to an 
unavoidable accident : Mr. Samuel Sammis 
was the father of the dark-eyed young lady ! 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

PUFFER HOPKINS IMPROVES AN ACQUAINT- 
ANCE. 

A half-hour's walk, in which Mr. Fish- 
blatt harangued and expatiated, without limit, 
upon the iniquity of the bill for clearing the 
upper Wabash, brought them to the Great- 
kiln road, abutting on the Hudson, in Green- 
wich. And there, with a flaming red front, 
and a couple of apothecary's bottles staring 
from the first floor like two great blood-shot 
eyes, stood by itself the domicil of Mr. Samuel 
Sammis. Beyond, Standing upon the river, 
and just visible across the anijle of the house. 
arose a pair of hay-acales, with in inicriptioc 
to the effect thai Samuel Sammis was ireigh- 
master and prefiidenl of tie- same. 

They were led to an upper story, for Mr. Sain 



260 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



mis, like his friend Fishblatt, possessed the 
second floor — and, being ushered in, they 
came upon a party of old and young ladies, 
scattered about the apartment, in the very ze- 
nith and ecstacy of a full-blown litter of work- 
baskets, sewing-silk, and small-talk. The first 
object that fixed the attention of Puffer as 
they entered, was the dark-eyed young lady 
herself, busy fashioning portentous capitals, 
in white thread, upon a long red banner or 
bunting ; and, at her ear, that everlasting old 
woman, whispering away, apparently, at the ' 
rate of a page a minute at least. There were 
other young ladies, each diligent with her scis- 
sors and needle, clipping, binding, patching. 
None seemed to be engaged in the literary de- 
partment but the dark-eyed young lady ; and 
not one, in Puffer's eye, was half as fair as she ! 
There was one small and gentle, with auburn 
hair and lucid, blue eyes ; another round and 
plump ; another quite stately, with a wild, 
flashing look. There seemed to be a mould in 
his heart, and no other image would fit it but 
that one. 

The dark-eyed young lady smiled a welcome 
to Puffer — turned to the old lady at her side, 
and whispering the words, "My aunt," as an 
introduction, invited him to a seat. Mr. Fish- 
blatt, who was quite at home, was already in 
a chair. 

" You are quite a stranger, Mr. Fishblatt," 
said the aunt, who was a little, prim old 
woman, dressed with exemplary neatness, and 
with a pair of dancing eyes. " You haven't 
been to see us since last election. What's kept 
you away — rheumatics ? — no ; perhaps it's been 
the winds that has blown down the city for the 
last month and better. You was afraid of get- 
ting a mouthful if you walked up this way. 
Wasn't that it ? Ah ! ah !" And the little old 
woman broke into a clear, joyous laugh which 
rung through the room and was echoed by the 
whole company of stitchers and sewers. 

" Oh, no ; nothing of that sort, I promise 
you, upon my honor," answered Mr. Halsey 
Fishblatt, gravely. " My whole mind, soul, 
heart, and body, have been engrossed with pub- 
lie affairs — horribly engrossed ; so many ex- 
citing, and important, and weighty questions. 
One's no sooner well disposed of than another 
pops up. I only despatched the other day the 
question about the aqueduct, and, curse it, 
here's another water-question. I am borne down 
with anxiety and excessive thinking. Where's 
Sammy ?" 

To this question the old lady made answer 
that Samuel was at the scales ; that he was 
very busy at this season ; that she would call 
him in if Mr. Fishblatt would like to see him ; 
and jumping up, in a minute more, would have 
put her head forth toward the river and sum- 
moned him ; but on Mr. Fishblatt's entreaty 
she refrained, and he went out to seek him for 
himself. 

Finding the field clear for conversation, 
Puffer addressed himself to the dark-eyed young 



lady to the effect that she seemed to be a little 
in public life as well as Mr. Fishblatt, judging 
by the use to which she was putting the bunt- 
ing on which she was at work. 

" Oh, I only do as I am bid !" answered the 
dark-eyed young lady, " I'd as leave write one 
thing in here as another ; my thread and needle 
are neutral, I assure you." 

" How can you say so, Fanny !" exclaimed 
the aunt, smiling upon her, " she is one of the 
most arrant little politicians in the city, Mr. 
Hopkins ; she keeps this whole ward in a con- 
stant ferment with her political tea-drinkings, 
and dances, and complimentary balls. You 
know something of her there, I guess ; and 
now she's corrupting the alphabet itself." 

" Aunt, I detest politics, and you know I do !" 
answered the young lady; "I'd rather, any 
day, walk down the sunny side of Hudson- 
street, than carry the state for our party !" 

" You see she has a party — ah ! ah ! Now, 
Fanny, I shall expose some of your tricks. 
What do you think, Mr. Hopkins ? This young 
lady, here, is so much of a demagogue, that, 
though her own tastes run in favor of broad 
laces and net-work gloves, she tramps, three 
times a week, the whole breadth of the city, 
and spends the morning in running up and 
down the stores in Division street — you've 
seen them, the little square shops with a back 
entry and a glass door, and a green vine dang- 
ling against the fence, and a young lady with 
twisted ringlets sitting between the two ? — there 
she goes, and, with the aid of the two-and- 
forty milliners of that street, gets up dresses 
and costumes to catch the cartmen's daughters 
and the young mechanics ! Now don't deny it, 
Fanny !" 

During this narrative, Fanny glanced stealth- 
ily at Puffer, and blushed as deep a red as the 
silk she was at work upon. Before Puffer 
could enter upon a vindication of the young 
lady, which he fully meditated, the little old 
lady sprang up from her chair, ran into the 
corner of the room where a green shrub of 
some kind or other was vegetating in a blue 
tub, and called Puffer after her. 

" Here's something great for you to look at, 
Mr. Hopkins ; what a stem ! did you ever see 
such a stem to a seven months' tree ? What 
leaves ! The lemons are every bit as big as 
plums — they'll be twice as large this time a 
year !" There was no limit to the eloquent 
praises poured out upon this domestic lemon ; 
which was steadily exhibited to all visiters. 
This was Fanny's too — she had brought it up 
from a sprig. Then the old aunt — who seemed 
to have taken a sudden fancy to Puffer — caused 
a sampler to be unhooked from the wall, car- 
ried it to the light and expatiated upon it at 
equal length. Then she bustled to the door 
and whistled in a short-legged yellow dog, who 
stumped about the room, looking up in every 
body's face in the most comical fashion. He 
proved to be the property of Miss Fanny too ; 
and his birth, parentage, history, and past ex- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



261 



ploits (especially the incident of his drinking 
gin out of a bottle, in his infancy) were dwelt 
upon with edifying particularity. By the time 
the short-legged dog had finished the circuit of 
the company, a savor of supper began to 
creep through the key-hole of an adjacent fold- 
ing door, and the aunt, breaking off her dis- 
course abruptly, hoisted the window and shout- 
ed to Mr. Samuel Sammis that tea was ready. 
Having delivered this summons she closed the 
window ; but presently hoisted it again to say 
that he had better come at once. Mr. Sammis 
failing to appear as soon as she desired, she 
raised it a third time to suggest that he had 
forgotten they had short-cake ! The appeal 
was not in vain — Mr. Sammis's soul was 
touched at last, and he came in with Mr. 
Fishblatt. 

Mr. Samuel Sammis was a foxy-looking little 
gentleman, in drab pants and a weather- wash- 
ed blue coat, his hair was thin, his linen ques- 
tionable, and when he came forward to greet 
Puffer, his face was a cobweb of smiles. 

" I'm very happy to see you, sir," he said ; 
"I knew you well by reputation, although I 
hadn't had the honor to be personally acquaint- 
ed. It's always a pleasure to become acquaint- 
ed with gentlemen of tried patriotism, Mr. 
Fishblatt ?" 

Mr. Fishblatt assented to the postulate, and 
—the folding-door being cast open — they 
marched in to supper. The opening of the 
folding-door disclosed a table spread with a 
liberal variety of dishes, and steaming with a 
cloud of tea-smoke that hung aloft. The chairs 
were placed, and the company were about to 
take seats at random, when Mr. Sammis begged 
them to pause. 

"This table," said Mr. Sammy Sammis, 
evolving a little piece of pleasantry which he 
had elaborated in secret, with great care ; 
" This table," said he, " is the empire State, 
with the various products of its soil. The 
chairs, of which you see there are eight, repre- 
sent the eight senate districts or divisions. 
Aunt," addressing the old lady, " will you be 
good enough to sit for Dutchess and Orange — 
here, opposite the butter, for which Goshen, 
you know, is famous. Mr. Fishblatt, I'll send 
you up the river as far as wheat-growing 
Albany — there, that's it, abreast the short- 
cake. Mr. Hopkins, you're the member for 
New York, and must lake your place at the 
bottom of the table and catch what you can 
from the river-counties as it comes down. Will 
you take charge of the salt-springs of Salina — 
I mean the salt-cellars," pointing two of the 
young ladies to chairs at the corners of the 
board; "and you," motioning the third to a 
seat in the centre, " Miss Erie, famous for 
your fruits — have the region of the peaches 
and preserves. I'll take the Oneida sheep- 
farms under my care," settling into a chair 
opposite a plate of cold mutton. " And for 
you, Miss Fanny, who arc always babbling and 
making a noise, there's the teaboard for you — 
17 



I the district of Trenton falls ; you may pour the 
tea, but don't put too much water in it. You 
may begin as soon as you please." 

They were all in their places ; the dishes 
were passed rapidly from hand to hand ; the 
tea poured, and they were fairly launched up- 
on the meal. The weight of responsibility 
heaped upon them by Mr. Sammis did not seem 
to have impaired their natural powers a jot ; 
but each one — young ladies and all — fell to as 
though they were in reality so many great pub- 
lic characters, each eating for a county. 

After a half-hour's sturdy devotion to the 
products of the Empire state — as represented 
by the table — a pause sprung up, and Mr. Sam- 
mis availed himself of it for a little profession- 
al talk. 

" Fanny, my dear," said Mr. Sammis, " how 
far have you got in your lettering of the ban- 
ner ?" 

" The whole inscription," she answered. 
" ' Bottomites — Uncompromising friendship to 
the clearing of the Wabash.' That was it." 

" How could you make such a mistake ?" 
exclaimed Mr. Sammis, in a rapture of sur- 
prise. " It was < hostility,' not ' friendship.' " 

" I'm sure you told me < friendship,' father," 
retorted the young lady, " and to use the long- 
est letters I could for the word." 

" It was wrong, my dear," answered Mr. 
Sammis, calmly ; " absence of mind — you'll al- 
ter it after tea, if you please." 

The Bottomites had cried aloud in favor of 
the clearing as long as they thought it wouldn't 
pass ; now that it had unexpectedly passed, 
they changed their cry. The relettering of 
the banner, was the result of an elaborate con- 
ference of Messrs. Fishblatt and Sammis, at 
the hay-scales. 

" You think it all-important," said Mr. Sam- 
mis, addressing Puffer, after a pause, during 
which the business of the table had been dil- 
igently prosecuted ; " you think it all-import- 
ant to carry our next state-election ?" 

" Certainly !" responded Puffer. 

" We must come down to Cayuga bridge," 
proceeded Mr. Sammis, " with four thousand, 
or we are done for in the next presidential cam- 
paign. The river counties are all right, I am 
told ; Dutchess gives us five hundred, and Al- 
bany county is safe for at least three hundred 
and seventy-five." 

" How is the Fourth ward of the capital ?" 
asked Puffer, having in mind a political com- 
monplace which he was quite sure Mr. Sammy 
Sammis would quote upon him. 

" We must have it !" averred Mr. Sammis. 
" as goes the Fourth ward so goes Albany, ami 
as goes the Fourth ward so goes the state, urn 
know." 

" To be sure !" echoed Puller, " and we must 
make what we can out of the upper Wabash, 
at the first election that's held." 

"By all means," said Mr. Fishblatt, with en- 
thusiasm, " we must rouse the popular mind 
with strong appeals; we must Bhow them the 



262, 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



enormity of the measure ; point to the results, 
if the bill is allowed to pass into effect, to this 
city and state. 

" Yes — and call upon them in the name of i 
the lamented Decatur, to save the country from 
ruin !" added Mr. Sammis. " Decatur was a 
man of tried patriotism, I think V 

It was not easy to keep Puffer's mind to the 
subject; his eyes wandered constantly to the 
quarter where a certain young lady was seat- 
ed; so that he was soon dropped out of the dis- 
course, leaving Messrs. Sammis and Fishblatt 
to keep it up in their own way. Puffer's glan- 
ces were not entirely unnoticed or unreward- 
ed. Miss Fanny, too, had, somehow or other, 
grown pensive and uncommunicative, with a 
marvellous coincidence as to time and circum- 
stance. When they had returned to the sew- 
ing-room, she exhibited to Puffer another flag, 
on which she had wrought the words, " For 
Congress," with a blank underneath for the 
name of the candidate. 

" I wish I were allowed to fill it up," she 
said, looking at Puffer. 

Puffer felt his heart beat quick, but did not 
venture to ask whose name it would bear. 
They seemed to understand each other better 
from that moment. 

" My aunt was right," she continued, after 
a pause, speaking now without reserve. " I 
put a restraint upon my feelings to please my 
father ; you understand now what I said at the 
ball. For my own part, and on my own account, 
I would rather lead a quiet life, aside from the 
bustle and face-making of politics. Have you 
ever had such a feeling in your busy life ?" 

" Many and many a time !" answered Puf- 
fer, calling to mind his poor neighbor, and the 
gentle quietude of his little chamber. " The 
life that glides away, like the stream that clings 
to its bed, I sometimes think may be happier 
than if it had foamed and brawled, and was 
broken in pieces in the clamor of a waterfall." 

"And yet, I don't deny," continued Miss 
Fanny Sammis, " that I would like to have my 
carriage, with one sleek horse, and ride through 
Broadway once a week. I would not care 
about it oftener." 

"Come, Miss Fanny, we must have some 
music !" cried Mr. Sammy Sammis, stepping 
out upon the floor, leading out one of the young 
ladies by the hand. "We have rested long 
enough — John, take a partner," to one of a 
swarm of young clerks that had come in after 
tea. " Mr. Fishblatt — aunt. Aunt — Mr. Fish- 
blatt. Start up, William," to another of the 
young clerks — and to the last of them. " Mr. 
Jones, there's another young lady left — lead 
her out !" 

Puffer had walked with Miss Fanny into the 
other room, where, in a recess behind the door, 
stood an old red piano. Miss Fanny ascended 
the stool, and Mr. Sammis cried out to his part- 
ners in the dance, " Now, recollect, it's the 
northern and western districts" — his head 
was still running on the political divisions of 



the state. " It's northern and western against 
eastern and southern. The first couple that 
breaks down is in a minority, and incapable of 
taking partners for the next three dances. 
Strike up, Miss Fanny ! — the Governor's 
march, if you please." 

Miss Fanny, with Puffer at her side, struck 
the first few notes with a bold hand, as Mr. 
Sammis desired — but presently, as in spite 
of herself, a gentler air crept upon the keys, 
and, instead of a cotillon, she was playing a 
pathetic ditty. 

" Louder and livelier !" shouted Mr. Sam- 
mis. " We want the Governor's march — four 
thousand strong !" 

She essayed the tune ; but the notes came 
again softened from her fingers, and seemed 
sighing back to the words that Puffer breathed 
gently in her ear. 

With constant remonstrances on the part of 
Mr. Sammy Sammis, who was dancing for the 
whole northern tier of counties (the six war- 
dancing tribes included), and constant relapses 
on the part of Miss Fanny, the evening wore 
away. 

At a late hour, Mr. Fishblatt, who, being a 
slow and solid dancer, had, to the surprise of 
all parties, carried the day, called for his hat ; 
had Mr. Sammis aside in a whispered conver- 
sation, with occasional glances at Puffer, for a 
quarter of an hour ; and, gallantly kissing the 
old aunt, summoned Puffer, and left. 

Miss Fanny thought the travel of the stair- 
way so perilous, as to bring a light even to the 
very front door ; what passed there, between 
the dark-eyed young lady and the young poli- 
tician, while Mr. Halsey Fishblatt stood in the 
street calling to him, remains a profound mys- 
tery. The spectacle, could he have looked up- 
on it as an observer, would have doubtless 
seemed to Puffer infinitely more agreeable than 
that of the old aunt with her wrinkled visage 
inside of the dark-eyed young lady's hood. 
Marching arm-in-arm with Mr. Fishblatt, it is 
well known that Puffer put several pointed and 
searching questions to that gentleman, the an- 
swers to which were to the effect that Mr. Sam- 
my Sammis was an incessant letter-writer to 
all parts of the state ; a wire-puller and waker- 
up of counties and villages. That Miss Fan- 
ny was his only child ; the old lad5 r , his aunt, 
and Fanny's grandaunt — and being an unin- 
cumbered woman, with a round sum out at in- 
terest, Fanny was her favorite. After procu- 
ring which results, Puffer fell silent ; and al- 
though Mr. Fishblatt addressed him in several 
most elaborate and animated harangues, he 
kept on musing, till they parted for tlie night. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE DEATH OF FOB. 

It was all a cheat. The lustre in his eyes 
was false and treacherous as the glittering 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



263 



whirlpool. The bloom upon his cheek was of 
the hue of the rose with the canker at its heart. 
Fob was dying. Martha had procured a little 
lodging directly opposite his chamber, and there 
she stayed when driven from his bedside by the 
considerate poor neighbors, who saw how her 
strength was wasted in efforts to preserve his. 
Even on such nights as she was not allowed 
to be a watcher in his chamber, she would ho- 
ver about the door and through the hall — a gen- 
tle spirit — eager to catch the slightest cry of 
pain, and taking keen note if he but turned in 
his couch. Spring had gone : summer had 
come, and was ebbing fast ; and, as its gentle 
breath died murmuring by the window of the 
little tailor, his pulses faltered more and more. 
At first he had been able to rise at times, and, 
going to his dormer — that precious window of 
all the Fork — had cheered himself with the sight 
of the sun at its rising — the slow-lapsing mo- 
tions of the vessels as they glided down the 
river. Now that he was stretched all day long 
upon his couch, he made Martha — a service 
she was skilful to perform — stand at the win- 
dow, and report to him, day by day, all that 
passed. The little street-sights, the crowds 
that gathered about the blind flute-player, the j 
color of the horses and carriages that went by, 
the shape of the country-wagons that clattered 
into town, with guesses whence they came. | 
But, most of all, he made her dwell upon the 
aspect of the country beyond the river. From 
her look-out she had followed the farmers 
through all their harvesting, from the first 
glance of the sickle among the grain to the 
garnering in the old red-roofed barns. She 
had told him — no more faithful chronicler than 
Martha — the color the fields had put on in all 
their changes, from green to brown, and back 
again to green ; and how the woods grew 
bright, and ruffled and swelled with their palmy 
leaves ; and then, when the yellow crept among 
them — but this she did not dwell on as the oth- 
er, for Fob's heart fell when he heard that 
summer, the sweet, calm, gentle summer, was 
leaving the country. She had watched his fan- 
cy, and served it even in bringing him cider to 
drink, pressed from the old orchards in West- 
chester, where his youth, and hers too, for 
that, had climbed and frolicked. One day, he 
called to her to bring all his country treasures, 
his plants, his birds'-egg chain, his asparagus, 
and the fair addition she had made herself, anil 
lay them on his bed. Martha came and sat 
down at his head. As his look passed from 
one to the other, tears gathered in his eyes 
and fell, like the summer rain, upon the pil- 
low. His heart was full, and he began to 
babble of old times. He spoke of his youth, 
and asked Martha if she remembered how he 
used to come riding into the country, seated 
gravely on the coach-seat, high in the air, ma- 
kini,' a show of helping the driver with his 
horses ? She did, of course ihe did j and how 
she, with her mother, now dead am! goat, used 
to run and help him down. Then, there was 



the visit to the garden, to see her robin that 
she had been feeding sleek and plump all the 
latter spring and early summer, against his 
coming. Then the blackberrying, and the 
grape-hunting, and the bird-nesting. 

So summer after summer had passed; his 
father — the cousin of Martha's father — had, to 
the surprise of all the country round, come, by 
the will of their whimsical grandfather, into 
ownership of the homestead, which Martha's, 
as the expectant and favored heir, had occu- 
pied before. Then, fortune turning once again 
(a little law and a little doubtful practice help- 
ing her to turn), Martha's father had reinstated 
himself. Fob— his father had died of vexation 
and a broken heart, it was said — young and 
penniless, was pushed forth upon the world — 
was driven upon the unpropitious craft he had 
lately followed. Martha begged him, when he 
came to this, to pass it by — though her father 
had been her cruel jailer for years — to pass it 
by, as he loved her. How dark and unnatural 
the little tailor's features grew as he came up- 
on these recollections. He felt that his coun- 
tenance was changed, and turned to the wall 
that Martha might not learn how keen was his 
sense of the wrong her father — her unkind, her 
unpaternal father — had done him. He had 
done her, too, a cruel wrong — but she showed, 
by no change of look or color, any remem- 
brance of it whatever. When this cloud had 
passed, and he could speak again, Fob dwelt 
upon the old haunts he had visited while she 
was in her dark dungeon at home, how she 
had been with him in all. 

" In the lane, the meadow, the orchard," 
said Fob, " I lingered, striving to tread in the 
very tracks we had made together when the 
world went right with us. But it was all by 
stealth — at early morning or by the dull dusk ; 
and, in the indistinct light, how often, Martha, 
did you seem to me to be gliding about, pale 
and breathless, but still loving — paler than 
even now. As it was — cautious and secret as 
I could be in my watch, the laborers or boys of 
the farm, crossing the paths on their way home 
at night or back at morning, sometimes came 
upon me, and started aside as though I had. 
been a spirit of evil." 

" I knew that it must be so," answerd Mar- 
tha, " for these were days (it was when report 
of yourself, the strange wanderer, had reached 
my father's ear) when they said my illness was 
deepening upon ine — I was moved to an inner 
chamber, gloomier than the other, the cur- 
tains drawn close, the shutters sealed, and se- 
cretly nailed, too — for I heard the dull sound 
of the hammer — and light was shut from I 
if it had been a wicked thing." 

" Was that the result V cried Fob, with a 
piteous look. "What a i"'"i 1 ms, t<> bring 

such a hardship upon you." 

'• I do not say il OTU a hardship !" said Mar- 
tha, " I loved the darknrss the\ thrust upon 
me, deep am! deadly as it WU| H ««l lull oj 
voices and bright eyes, like your own, telUnf 



264 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



me of your love and faithful constancy. They 
said the darkness made me more cheerful — and 
they were right." 

" And what followed to you," continued Fob, 
" when they seized me as I was stealing along 
und er the garden-wall ?" 

Fob stopped at once ; the countenance of 
Martha was whitening with a look of sorrow- 
ful entreaty, and her eyes filling with tears. 
He understood it at a glance — she wished to 
have her father spared, though he had never 
thought of sparing her — and Fob turned at 
once to talk of other things. 

" Do you remember the old orchard burying- 
ground," he asked, u and the uses to which we 
were wont to put it f" 

" To be sure I do," answered Martha, re- 
covering her composure. " The old burying- 
ground, full of fruit-trees, with the little school- 
house pushed in at one side, as if it meant to 
be a good neighbor. Toddling infants, dear 
Fob, we strayed there to gather blossoms and 
flowers, brighter than we could find anywhere 
else. As we grew older and more learned, 
you know, we loved to read our letters there 
upon the tombstones ; and, older still, and 
wiser, were we not ? — we began to pluck the 
red and yellow apples, the earliest ripened of 
the neighborhood." 

" And then," said Fob, taking up the theme 
as Martha paused, " when our hearts ripened, 
and our cheeks flushed like the fruit above us, 
we used to sit in the summer noon under the 
broad shade, leaning upon a grave, it might 
be ; and while the country round, for a wide 
circuit, was steeped in a listening stillness, the 
little burying-ground — swarming with bees and 
crickets, and melodious locusts — was filled 
with a gentle murmur, which seemed like the 
undersong of the spirits that slept beneath its 
turf." 

Martha bent above Fob, as he spoke, hang- 
ing on his words. 

"And when," said Fob, rising in his couch 
in enthusiasm, " the little brook between the 
schoolhouse and the graves, swelled by its trib- 
utes from the woods, babbled above them all — 
the gentle hum died away toward nightfall, 
and the children came tumbling out of school, 
you know, they used to cross it, and letting 
their feet rest a moment on the graveyard's 
edge, they escaped into the road and scampered 
to their homes, leaving a sound of cheerful 
young voices far behind. There, where little 
feet tread every day, so that they may say 
c Fob lies here !' — lay me there !" 

He had spoken beyond his strength ; and 
these words were no sooner uttered than he 
fell back upon his couch. Martha seized 
his pale hand passionately — as though she 
could so hold him back from the world to which 
he was hastening — and, bending above him, 
begged him to speak again. Presently his eyes 
opened, and he dwelt upon her face with a be- 
wildered gaze. Was he among angels — this 
at his bedside the first he was to know ? There 



was not a word spoken, but their eyes were 
busy interchanging their lustrous light, a calm, 
bright, spell-bound gaze — was this the talk of 
the spiritual world ? 

At this moment the door opened ; a young 
gentleman of an ashen aspect, sandy hair, 
and a look of strenuou^ cunning about the 
eye, came in, and behind him, treading 
lightly, and with a mournful look, Puffer Hop- 
kins. 

The young gentleman bore under his arm a 
great bundle of papers, tied in a red string, 
which he was at the pains to carry about, to 
notify the public that he was a lawyer in prac- 
tice — a good, brisk, chopping practice, as they 
might infer from the size of the bundle. While 
Puffer looked sorrowfully upon Martha and 
Fob, the young gentleman busied himself in 
slashing the feathers of a quill which he had 
brought with him, and in peering about the 
apartment for an inkstand. 

"He's going fast," said the young gentle- 
man, calling in his glances from their unpro- 
ductive search, and fixing them upon the quill 
which he was trimming. "Didn't he gasp, 
then, or was that a cat sneezing on the roof?" 

Puffer avoided his question, and asked 
whether it was absolutely necessary to disturb 
him now ; he seemed to be in great pain. 

" To be sure it is," answered the young gen- 
tleman, poising his papers in his two hands, to 
show their weight. " You couldn't have a bet- 
ter. Testimony in extremis is the finest in the 
world. Mr. Mouldy says he must have it ; 
and what Mouldy says is law !" 

" Mr. Mouldy thinks he ought to be identi- 
fied as the person that had the deed in his pos- 
session, and who destroyed it. I so understood 
him." 

" You understood him right, then,'' said the 
young gentleman, turning calmly on his heel 
as soon as he had made this answer, and break- 
ing into a subdued whistling. 

" You attended to getting the old man here, 
I believe ?" suggested Puffer. 

" I asked Mr. Mouldy about that before I 
left the office. One of the boys has gone for 
him ; he will be here in a minute." With 
which answer the young gentleman stepped 
across the floor, and unfastening the blackbird 
from where it hung upon the beam, took it to 
the window, and began to make it hop about 
in its cage by pricking it under the feathers 
with his quill. Puffer, standing aside, dwelt 
upon Fob and his pale companion, holding his 
breath lest he should disturb them. Quick feet, 
clattering up, were heard upon the stairs, and 
Hobbleshank came hurrying in. At first he 
started in surprise when he saw Martha, b 
recovering himself speedily, he stepped abou 
the chamber, shaking hands with the youn: 
gentleman, then with Puffer, and, last of a 
aecosting Martha. 

" This, then, is your friend," said he, smi- 
ling upon her. She glanced at Fob, with a 
look that went to the old man's heart, and he 



ad 

be 

! 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



265 



was answered. Fob lifted his eyes, and regard- 
ed Hobbleshank with curious interest. Was 
this another risen from the dead ? Changed as 
he was by years, the furrows on his counte- 
nance ploughed in, his hair grizzled and gray- 
sprinkled by time — he could not mistake him. 
It was the old wanderer of the Scaresdale road. 
The melancholy midnight — the raging sea — the 
rent deed — all came up before him. A chair 
was placed for Hobbleshank, and he took his 
station by the bedside, where Fob could look 
upon his countenance with the light streaming 
upon it. The young gentleman had drawn up 
the curtain ; led Martha and Puffer aside, to 
get rid of their shadows upon the bed ; and 
himself retreated behind a little screen at the 
head of the bed, from which bower there 
issued, from time to time, a scratching sound. 

" You have had troubles, sir," said Fob, 
bearing in mind what he had seen on the mem- 
orable night. 

" A few," answered Hobbleshank, rubbing 
his hands. " A few, but they are all clearing 
away. Have you had none ?" 

" Yours are older than mine," resumed Fob. 
" They have followed you to an old age ; but 
they are leaving me while I am still a young 
man." Martha knew what he meant, and 
turned and wept. " You have been eighteen 
years a sufferer, at least." 

"Let me see," said Hobbleshank, taking 
the square breastpin from his bosom and refer- 
ring to its back, which was graven and let- 
tered. " Quite as long as that ; but I'll soon 
be young again. Fortune is my friend, and all 
is coming right. An old parchment or so — a 
clew or two more — and I shall find my child, 
and have a home to bring him to. In a day or 
two all will be right." 

They all smiled, the clerk even laughed 
aloud in his bower, at the earnest hopefulness 
of the old man. 

" How a deed, all torn in fragments and par- 
cels, can come back," said Fob, smiling with 
the others, " it would be hard to guess. Won't 
you admit that ?" 

" It seems so, at first," answered Hobble- 
shank ; " but a good Providence, I am sure — 
I feel it whispering in my ear this very min- 
ute — is putting it together. It will be ready 
when I want it." 

" And that is now !" said Fob, reaching 
backward under his pillow. " And here it is !" 

Hobbleshank held in his hand the parchment 
he had scattered on the seashore a lifetime 
ago. He would not believe it, but, springing 
from his chair, ran to the window, where he 
would have read it, but his hands trembled and 
made it waver, all blurred and confused before 
him. He called Puller to his aid, who, going 
over it slowly, line by line, made known its 
contents. When Puffer came to the passage 
relating to his child, he made him pause ami 
read it over twice, looking up into (he reader's 
face with a look of indescribable satisfaction. 
It was his old deed, and no other. 



" Where did this come from — where was it 
found — by whom ?" asked Hobbleshank, look- 
ing toward the little tailor. 

a Eighteen years ago," said Fob, as soon as 
Hobbleshank could be brought to take his seat 
again by the bedside, " there was an old sor- 
row-stricken man, travelling by the shore of 
the sound. Eighteen years ago this deed was 
rent by his hands in a hundred fragments." 

" Where — where is he now ?" asked Hob- 
bleshank, from whose mind all recollection of 
the occurrence — so fast had troubled thoughts 
and times huddled upon him — had entirely 
faded. " Where is this man ?'' 

" You are the man ; older, but happier, it 
would seem— and I am the other, your fellow- 
wanderer that night. Live and grow in hap- 
piness, while I pass beyond the sphere of earth- 
ly pain or pleasure. You are the man !" 

His strength was utterly gone, and ere Mar- 
tha could reach his side, he lay, his arms 
stretched out, his head fixed and rigid on the 
pillow. They all thought he was dead. In a 
little while — Martha ministering what she 
could to bring him back— a faint color came 
into his cheek, his eyes opened again upon the 
light ; but now their expression was changed. 
They wandered from face to face with a hope- 
less and bewildered glance. His mind was 
gone astray. He babbled incoherently of the 
green fields — the old coach — the homestead. 
Sometimes he repeated the name of Martha — 
then he had another upon his tongue, but, 
shuddering, it died away before it was uttered. 

Whenever his hands, straying about the cov- 
ering of his bed, fell upon any one of his coun- 
try treasures, he came back and talked of early 
times. News had spread throughout the Fork 
that Fob was dying, and they thronged up, and 
holding the little children in their hands — Fob 
had always been a friend of theirs — they stood 
at the door, looking on with sorrowful respect. 

At this moment the young gentleman came 
from behind the screen, pressed his quill upon 
his coat-skirt, and thrust the neAV paper he had 
been framing among the others in the bundle. 
He then scrutinized the deed curiously for a 
minute, and handing it to Hobbleshank. ad- 
vised him to roll it up and put it in his pocket ; 
and, clapping his bundle of papers under his 
arm, he walked off. 

As the sun waned away in the sky, the bright- 
ness faded from Fob's look, and he spoke only 
at long intervals ; murmuring what he would 
say, so that no one but Martha, whose lace 
was always close to his, could gather what he 
uttered. 

A little while after sunset— the room \\:<s 
growing dark in all its comers — he btni to 
talk aloud again. He called, over and over 
again, for an old serving-man oi' the home- 
stead, whose name he mentioned, to come to 
his side; fixed his look on the 11001 blackbird, 
whose cage had been restored to its place up- 
on the beam, and clasped, tighter and tighter, 
Martha's hand in his. With the gentle motion 



266 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



of the wind upon a field of autumn grain, his 
spirit stole away ; and at an hour past sunset 
Fob was dead ! 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

PUFFER IS NOMINATED TO THE AMERICAN CON- 
GRESS. 

it would be a great wrong to Puffer — 
colored as were all his acts by some hue of 
his trade — to suppose that the death of his 
poor neighbor had not touched him nearly. 
The genial spirit of the Fork was gone ; the 
kindly sunshine which had flowed from that 
little dormer through all its chambers, was 
darkened. Puffer felt that a dear friend was 
dead. He would have helped, with other 
ready hands, to lay him in a quiet grave ; but 
when he would have offered aid, the body — 
which Martha had watched alone, refusing, 
even angrily, all aid or company — was gone, 
no one could tell whither. It had been borne 
forth secretly at dusk ; and one of the children 
who had been out at play upon the meadows, 
brought news that he had seen it upon the shoul- 
ders of two men, in the suburbs, gliding toward 
the country, with Martha watching and follow- 
ing it alone. 

With the kindliest remembrance of his poor 
friend, Puffer was not permitted long to rest ; 
the pressure from without forced upon him 
other thoughts. His fortunes were on the ad- 
vance, and he would set apart a quiet hour, 
at some better day, to think of the little tailoi 
and his virtues. 

An unlucky accident at the Capitol required 
that an election should be held for a single 
member of Congress. The late city represen- 
ts uve — the lamented Slocum, he was entitled 
in the newspapers — had lost his invaluable life 
under a surfeit of Potomac oysters and long 
speeches, and his place was now to be supplied. 
To carry on the contest with spirit, and any 
chance of success, it was necessary that an is- 
sue should be raised; it didn't matter greatly 
what or which side either espoused. The up- 
per Wabash presented itself and was adopted. 
The excitement rose to an unexampled pitch. 
The orators of Puffer's party, the Bottomites, 
having mastered their cue, went all lengths in 
denouncing it as an infraction of the rights 
of citizens — an invasion of the constitution 
— an act of the most high-handed despotism ; 
and foremost and conspicuous among these 
was Puffer himself. He was the very imbod- 
iment of the anti-upper- Wabash feeling; and 
he was nominated to the vacancy. Was there 
ever a more extraordinary character known 
— in history, ancient or modern, sacred or pro- 
fane — than Puffer Hopkins, now that he was 
nominated to Congress on the eve of a decisive 
contest ? The newspapers, morning, noon, 
and night, teemed with his praises. Little, 



obscure, out-of-the-way circumstances in his 
history, were dragged forth and made the oc- 
casion of the most flattering comment and al- 
lusion. 

Some one or other had discovered his habit of 
visiting the city cellars in quest of oysters ; he 
was immediately styled the " Patriot of the Pie- 
houses." He had caught, one afternoon, in 
company with a crew of political cronies, a 
small earful of striped-bass and Lafayette fish, 
in the East river, and was declared the " Hero 
of Kipp's bay." He had saved an omnibus- 
driver from being beaten to death by a crowd, 
for riding over the legs of a boy — and he was 
the " Champion of Conveyance." His very 
head was taken off his shoulders and put in 
plaster ; delegations of tradesmen were con- 
stantly waiting upon him, or writing compli- 
mentary letters, humbly soliciting the honor 
of crowning him with a new hat, or arraying 
him in a clean dickey. The Bottomites — be- 
ing staunch friends of free-trade — insisted on 
clapping him in a coat of Thibet wool, fancy 
pants of French jean, boots of Poughkeepsie 
leather, and a palm-leaf hat, so that he should 
be a representative of the unrestricted fabrics 
of the four quarters of the earth. 

On the other side, the illustrious Insurance 
President, Mr. Blinker, being a bitter foe to 
fire, and quite as close a friend to the opposite 
element, and having recovered! his popularity 
in the interval since his defeat, by insuring two 
poor cartmen's sheds at his own risk, and 
adopting the son of a disabled sailor as one of 
the secretaries of the company (though the 
young gentleman was as innocent of pot-hooks 
and ledgers as a Kamschatkan), Mr. Blinker 
was nominated by the advocates of the Upper 
Wabash. 

To carry out his principles, Mr. Blinker — 
having discovered that a second-hand senatorial 
coat and a sable and satin neckcloth were not 
always triumphant — assumed a round-crowned 
hat, and a homespun coat and breeches of the 
plainest texture ; in which array he went about 
diligently, drinking incessant glasses of gratu- 
itous water at the grocers', in furtherance of 
his Upper Wabash principles. 

He also proceeded to an active canvass of 
the churches, by attending a new one every 
Sunday, and rattling in a donation of half a 
dollar at least, at each. 

Puffer, not to be outdone by Mr. John Blink- 
er, canvassed the markets in opposition to the 
churches ; and having drilled a small company 
of young vagabonds, he made a circuit of the 
market-places on Saturday nights with these — 
their rags flying to the wind, and an expression 
of doleful gratitude in their faces — running at 
his heels ; Puffer keeping in the advance, and 
from time to time ordering a cutlet, or steak, 
or tender-loin, to be cast in. This was so well 
enacted, that he had not made a tour of the 
markets more than twice before he had the 
butchers in tears, and swearing by liver-and- 
lights, their own tender-loins, and all that they 



FUFFER HOPKEYS. 



tti 



hold holiest, that Puffer was an angel, with a 
heart as big as an ox. 

Everything gave token of a close and furious 
contest. Appeals, fresh and frequent, were 
made to every possible interest and every pos- 
sible voter. It was shown conclusively, in more 
than one harangue, and a hundred leaders, that 
every trade and denomination in business — lai- 
ty, clergy, law, medicine, merchandise — were 
particularly and vitally affected in the questions 
presented at the coming election. And, as the 
time drew nearer, a forcible address was made 
to that one voter in particular, by whose de- 
portment, as is well known, the fate of every 
contest is determined. There was not a de- 
vice for creating or securing electors that was 
not brought to bear ; and the one party or the 
other was constantly startled into unheard-of 
exertions, by learning that its opposite was 
strengthening itself with fresh recruits from 
quarters that could have never been dreamed of. 

There was one that toiled in Puffer's behalf 
more like a spirit than a man ; a little shrunken 
figure, that was everywhere, for days before 
the canvass ; a universal presence, breathing 
in every ear the name of Puffer. There was 
not a tap-room that he did not haunt : no ob- 
scure alley into which he did not penetrate, and 
make its reeking atmosphere vocal with his 
praises. Wherever a group of talkers or citi- 
zens were gathered, the little old man glided in 
and dropped a word that migh* bear frnit at 
the ballot-box. At nightfall he would mix with 
crowds of shipwrights' prentices and laborers, 
and kindle their rugged hearts with the thought 
of the young candidate. 

He stopped not with grown men and voters, 
but seizing moments when he could, he whis- 
pered the name in children's ears, that, being 
borne to parents by gentle lips, it might be 
mixed with kindly recollections, and so be made 
triumphant. 

It was given out that the Blinkerites had es- 
tablished or discovered, in some under-ground 
tenements that never saw light of day, a great 
warren of voters. When the toilsome old man 
learned of this burrow that was to be sprung 
against his favorite, he looked about for an 
equal mine, whence voters might be dug in 
scores, at a moment's notice, should occasion 
demand. With this in view, one afternoon, he 
entered Water street, at Peck slip, like a skilful 
miner, as though a great shaft had been sunk 
just there. 

And a strange climate it was that he was 
entering : one where the reek and soil are so 
thick and fertile, that they seem to breed end- 
less flights of great white overcoats, and red- 
breasted shirts, and flying blue trowsers, that 
swarm in the air, and fix, like so many bats, 
aeain-t the house-sides. 

Tropical, too, for there's not a gaudy color, 
green, or red, or orange-yellow, that the sun, 
shining through the smoky atmosphere, does 
notbrin? out upon the house-fronts; and for 
inhabitants of the region, there are countless 



' broad-backed gentlemen, who, plucking from 

; some one of the neighboring depositories a cloth 

roundabout, a black tarpaulin, and white slops, 

sit in the doorways launching their cigars upon 

the street, or gather within. 

Hobbleshank, a resident of the inland quar- 
ter of the city, certainly came upon these, with 
his frock and eye-glass, as a traveller and 
landsman*from far in the interior ; and when 
he first made his appearance in their thorough- 
fare, looking hard about with his single eye, it 
could not be cause of surprise that they won- 
dered aloud as he passed, where the little old 
lubber had come from, and that more than one 
: of them invited him to a drink of sheep's milk, 
or a collop of a young zebra, that one avowed 
they were chasing in the back yard for supper, 
at that moment. 

But when, as he got accustomed to the place, 
he accosted them with a gentle voice, said a 
complimentary word for their sign-board, with 
its full-length sailors lass — Hope upon her an- 
chor, or sturdy Strength, standing square upon 
his pins — they began at once to have a fancy 
for the old man. 

He passed from house to house, making 
friends in each. Sometimes he made his way 
into the bar-room, where, seated against the 
wall, on benches all around the sanded floor, 
with dusty bamboo rods, alligator skins, out- 
landish es2S, and sea-weeds plucked among the 
Caribees or the Pacific islands, or some far-off 
shore, he would linger by the hour, listening 
with all the wondering patience of a child, to 
their ocean-talk. And when they were through, 
i he would draw a homely similitude between 
their story — the perils their ship had crossed — 
with the good ship of state ; and then tell them 
of a you ns friend of his, who was on trial be- 
fore the ships crew for a masters place. Be- 
fore he left, in nine cases of ten, they gave 
their hands for Puffer, sometimes even rising 
and confirming it with a cheer that shook the 
house, and brought their messmates thronging 
in from the neighborhood, when the story would 
be recited to them by a dozen voices, and new 
■ recruits to Puffer's side enrolled. 

Then, asain, he would be told of an old sick 

; sailor in an upper chamber — tied there by rack- 

ins pains in his joints, answering, they would 

say, each wrench to the trials his old ship's 

timbers were passing through on the voyage 

she was now out upon — and mounting up, he 

I would find him busy in his painful leisure, 

' buildin? a seventy-six, razeed to the size of a 

cock-boat, for the landlord's mantle. Gaining 

' upon him by desrees, Hobbleshank would sit 

1 at his side ; and by-and-by, when he - 

| would be kindly taken, eatherin? up a thread 

of twine or two, and helpin? to form a length 

of cable or rissine. By the time a dozen ropes 

were fashioned, he would have a promise from 

the old sea-do? that he would show his teeth 

at the polls when roll-call came. 

There were some, too. ensraged in boisterous 
mirth and jollity in back parlors, just behind 



268 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



the bar ; where a plump little fellow, in his 
blue roundabout, duck trowsers supported by 
the hips, and tarpaulin hat, with a flying riband 
that touched the floor and shortened him in 
appearance by a foot, broke down in a horn- 
pipe to the sound of an ancient fiddle, that 
broke down quite as fast as he did. In the enthu- 
siasm that held him, Hobbleshank even joined 
in, and with some comic motions and strange 
contortions of the visage, carried the day so 
well that he won the back parlor's heart at 
once ; and they promised him whatever he 
asked. 

The little old man — true to the interest he 
had first shown — bent himself with such hearty 
good will to his task, that when, after many 
days' labor, he left Water street, at its other 
extremity, there was not a ripe old salt that 
was not gathered, nor a tall young sailor that 
was not harvested, for the cause. And so he 
pursued the task he had set to himself without 
faltering, without a moment's pause. For days 
before the contest came on, he was out at sun- 
rise, moving about wherever a vote could be 
found ; nursing and maturing it for the polling 
day, as a gardener would a tender plant; 
watching and tending many in out-of-the-way 
places, and by a skilful discourse, a chance 
word, an apt story, ripening it against the time 
when it was to be gathered. 

Late at night, when others, who might have 
been expected to be stirring and making in- 
terest for themselves, slumbered, Hobble- 
shank, taking his rounds through the city with 
the watchmen, with more than the pains of an 
industrious clear-starcher, smoothed the pla- 
cards on the fences ; jumping up where they 
were beyond his height, as was often the case, 
and brushing them down, both ways, with out- 
spread hands, so that they should read plain 
and free to the simplest passer-by. Was there 
ever one that toiled so, with the faith and 
heart of an angel, in the dusty road that time- 
servers use to travel ! 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HE DINES WITH THE MAGISTRATES. 

In the very midst of these silent labors of 
Hobbleshank, Puffer was at his desk, medita- 
ting a letter from an imaginary constituent to 
himself, and had got as far as, " To the Honor- 
able Puffer Hopkins, M. C," when there filed 
into his chamber three gentlemen, who, look- 
ing about for a moment and discovering that 
there were not chairs enough to hold them all, 
drew themselves up in a line and stood before 
him. Puffer, quite equal to the emergency, 
rose from his desk and faced his platoon of vis- 
iters. One of them, the head of the line, was 
a tall gentleman, in a segar-ash complexion 
and a rough frock-coat, in the pockets of which 
he deposited his hands ; the centre, a stout, 



rosy personage, whose head was propped up by 
a shirt-collar, of alabaster purity and stiffness, 
under his ears ; and the other, a little black- 
haired man, with a large mouth, and arms of 
an extraordinary length. Mr. Hopkins in- 
quired, delicately, into the object of their mis- 
sion. 

" We have come, sir," said the long-armed 
gentleman, reaching forth convulsively to the 
chair from which Puffer had risen, drawing it 
before him and fastening both hands firmly on 
its top ; " we have come, sir, to express our re- 
spect for your past public career — our admira- 
tion of the unflinching fortitude with which 
you have adhered to objects" — 

"Yes, sir — to objects," interposed the stout 
gentleman, cutting in as if he thought the 
long-armed man was getting more than his 
share ; " yes, sir, to objects of a profoundly 
patriotic character ; and, sir, we feel the hon- 
or of being delegated to wait upon you for the 
purpose of testifying the interest with which 
your course has been watched, not only, sir," 
he pursued, thrusting his left hand into his 
coat and spreading it upon a ruffled bosom; 
" not only, sir, by the friends of good order 
and correct principles — of advanced age — but 
also" — 

" By the rising generation ;" continued the 
tall gentleman, groping earnestly in the bot- 
tom of his frock-coat pockets, and drawing 
himself up to his full height. " You will not 
be surprised, therefore, sir, to learn that we 
are authorized to ask you, in the name of the 
common council of New York, to partake of a 
dinner with the magistrates of this city" — 

"At the almshouse," said the long-armed 
gentleman, " this afternoon" — 

" At five o'clock," said the stout speaker. 

The three orators had put Puffer in posses- 
sion of their errand, and he had a shrewd guess 
— as one of them was an alderman, and the 
others assistants — that this was one of those 
cases where a committee had been unable to 
agree upon a mouthpiece, and had compro- 
mised the difficulty by distributing the speech, 
as fairly as they could, in three parts. 

The invitation was not to be slighted ; and, 
having appointed to call for him at four, they 
filed out of the apartment in the same order in 
which they had entered. At four o'clock they 
reappeared, coming up in a body to wait upon 
him to the carriage, as if determined that no 
one should enjoy a crumb of honor more than 
the other. The vehicle into which the party 
mounted was an old corporation hack, and the 
horses, having travelled this road any time for 
ten years past, jogged along at an easy gait, 
knowing well enough that an alderman does 
not like to be disturbed in his agreeable reve- 
ries on the way to dinner. Leaving the streets, 
in less than half an hour they were out upon 
the avenue, where, as they glided comfortably 
along, they were constantly passed by gentle- 
men in rough coats, just like the tall assist- 
ant's, who, bending over in light wagons, gave 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



269 



the rein to long-legged, dock-tailed horses, and 
emulated the speed of other gentlemen -with 
long-legged nags and rough coats. Sometimes 
one passed, perched in the air upon an invisible 
axle resting between two huge wheels, and 
who held himself suspended, it seemed, by a 
constant miracle. Not more than fifty of these 
gentry had whirled by, tearing up the avenue, 
and losing themselves in clouds of dust in 
the distance, when the three aldermen, looking 
unanimously out of the coach-window, ex- 
claimed in a breath, " Here we are !" 

Puffer looked out, too. A great gate opened | 
silently from within ; their carriage glided j 
through ; and, rolling gently down a broad : 
way, they found themselves at the East river's 
brink, shut out by thick walls from all the city J 
world. The buildings that stood behind them, j 
and with which they were fellow-prisoners in j 
this silent realm, were dark and gray. 

The air and place were tranquil as midnight, 
and in strange contrast with the incessant mo- ! 
tions and shoutings of the busy road they had , 
left. The old almshouse, resting on the very 
water's edge, sat as silent as a stone ; the wa- 
ter, calm and smooth, seemed to stretch away 
before its dark old front, to furnish a glass in 
which it might view itself and learn how it 
bore its age. The sun poured a full afternoon 
into the yard, and, sitting in its very centre, 
his face against the river, in the porch of the 
building as they entered, was an old beggar, 
who, with a countenance of marble firmness 
and locks white as the unhetchled flax, seemed 
to be the image and god of the stillness that ; 
reigned about. 

The moment they ascended a few steps and 
opened a door, a peal of laughter burst, like a \ 
cloud upon the silence, in their very faces, and 
passing through the hall, they were in a room 
where the chief guests were assembled. In the 
centre of the group stood Mr. Gallipot, the 
major, in an entire new outfit, so ill-adjusted, 
and disproportioned to his person, that there 
could not be a doubt but that it had seen Chat- , 
ham street in its infancy, and while it was j 
growing into the dress of an adult mayor. 

" How are you, Hopkins ?" cried his honor, 
from the midst of his guests, " Let's have you 
this way ! Open the ring, Jenkins — stand 
back there, Tom Smith ;" and, falling away as 
they were bidden, Mr. Gallipot came forward, 
and seized Puffer cordially by the hand. 
Messrs. Jenkins and Tom Smith — two noted 
bottle-holders of the mayor's — offered him as 
hearty a welcome, with others, the chief politi- 
cians of the city, who were there ; and a short 
fellow, in a poorhouse gray roundabout and 
poorhouse cut hair, coming in and giving the 
summons, they marched across the hall to din- 
ner. The table was spread in a large square 
room, with delicious windows upon the river, 
and under the auspices of a stout gentleman, 
who hung in a great frame upon the wall, and 
gave warrant — having been a noted haunter of 



the room in his lifetime — of the good cheer that 
there abounded. 

There was no quarrel for precedence ; the 
mayor, with Puffer at his right hand, seized the 
head of the table ; the others fell into chairs, 
whose locality they seemed to have pitched up- 
on long before, and, seated at once, they filled 
them so happily, one might have sworn they 
were born, each man, for the particular Wind- 
sor or rush-bottom he occupied. The three 
stickling committee-men, even, had adjusted 
matters, the stout one sitting at the foot of the 
table, in its centre, and each of the other two 
at his wings. And when, speedily and in sol- 
emn order, the dishes began to appear, as one 
after the other came in at the head of the apart- 
ment, a whole galaxy of eyes rolled that way, 
and fixed upon them with a lingering fondness 
that would have moved the soul of a paean. 

And now the table was full, Puffer was not 
a little surprised — but quite as well pleased — 
to see his old friend Hobbleshank, handsomely 
laid between a couple of aldermen, with whom 
he seemed to have a good understanding, at 
the other end. 

Imperfect and obscure is the experience of 
any one who has not eaten a poorhouse dinner. 
The highest happiness allotted to man — at 
least in his imperfect and sinful state of exist- 
ence as a Xew-Yorker — it would seem, is to 
dine at the old almshouse. Jupiter restored 
to earth, would make his first call there ; and 
there Bacchus, if allowed, would undoubtedly 
bespeak lodgings for the rest of his immortality. 

For two weeks, in anticipation of the pres- 
ent banquet, the garden had been hoed, and 
harrowed, and forced ; the neighboring river 
had been anxiously searched for certain deli- 
cate fish that were known to lurk in the rocks, 
holding themselves in reserve for an alderman, 
for an equal fortnight ; and two sharp-eyed 
paupers had been off on an excursion up the 
Sound, in watch for duck and pigeon. Nothing 
could be more perfect, more delicious, and 
grateful, than the dinner spread upon the 
board ; and nothing more artful and ingenious 
than the arrangement of the diners. The 
cooks and servants of the establishment moved 
by a sure instinct — most of the guests were 
habitual frequenters of the place— seasoned each 
dish to a turn, and each gentleman was now 
found seated directly opposite whatever a well- 
practised appetite most earnestly coveted. For 
t better than an hour, a silence profound as death 
| reigned through the hall. The waiters, in their 
I poor-house liven - , and licking their chaps, 
| moved about on tiptoe ; it would have cost 
them their standing as paupers to have broken 
the charm by a word. Dishes were brought in 
and removed, in a mysterious stealth, which 
lent a piquancy to the proceeding ; and the 
very feeders themselves, absorbed in the - 
rites of the place, only ventured now and then 
to look off. for a minute, and smile to each 
other, and then started t£ 



270 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



This at an end, wine was brought in, a basket 
at a time, and being placed near his honor the 
mayor, he proceeded to uncork, but so unskil- 
fully, it seems, that the corks took a blank 
range down the table, and, what was singular, 
they always fell into a line that caused them to 
strike, dead-point, the sconce of a little quid- 
nunc, who was said to be a butt of the may- 
or's. Then the bottles were distributed down 
the table, one to each man ; which, being 
planted upon the board, stood there, a sort of 
tipsy ninepin, to be bowled down by the even- 
ing's mirth. When it was known that every 
glass was loaded to the brim, Mr. Gallipot 
sprang to his feet ; every eye was fixed upon 
him with intense anxiety; and when he 
announced, " Our Country," they started in 
like manner to their feet, and fell upon their 
wine with such patriotic ardor, that no one could 
have in the least suspected that country or its 
institutions of being in any way the bottom and 
main supply of the present festivities. But 
when Mr. Gallipot followed this with " The 
Public Charities," a faint surmise might have 
dawned on the beholder's mind, that the en- 
thusiasm was real, and that they meant all 
they did when they drank a bumper to these 
excellent corporate contrivances for such as are 
a hungered and athirst. And when, further 
on, his honor, allowing scarce a breath be- 
tween, followed this up with, " Our distin- 
guished guest and next member — Puffer Hop- 
kins" — a fearful tempest swept the table from 
end to end ; and one or two of the lighter quid- 
nuncs were even lifted from their feet, and 
landing upon the table, shook the glasses and 
bottles till they danced with them with joy. 

They felt grateful to Puffer for furnishing 
them so plausible an opportunity to investigate 
the economy of so excellent a city charity. 
Puffer was bound, of course, to respond to 
these admirable sentiments. 

Really (this was the train of his observa- 
tions) he never felt so oppressed in his life, in 
rising to speak. He was surrounded by kind 
and generous friends. He was their creature 
— they had taken him, a poor friendless youth, 
and made him what he was. Little had he 
dreamed, when making his first humble effort 
at Fogfire hall, of attaining an honor like this. 
If any one had told him the time would arrive 
when he should partake of canvass-back and 
champagne with his honor, the mayor, and the 
common council of New York, at the almshouse, 
he would have laughed at their folly. Canvass- 
back and champagne ! — they might as well 
have talked to him of a steam-carriage to 
Chimborazo, or a balloon-ride to the first fixed 
star! 

While Puffer was speaking, two or three of 
the inmates of the place were drawn to the 
door, and as he advanced in his speech, and 
looked off in that direction, by way of illustra- 
tion or gesture, he observed that two of them 
had fixed their attention keenly upon him him- 
self. One of them was a woman, of a stout 



person, into whose face some color was creep- 
ing, through easy living and good fare, and the 
other a man, thin and sorrowful of look. 

By the time he was done speaking, one of 
the poorhouse attendants had touched Hob- 
bleshank upon the shoulder, and he now 
helped to make the group that gathered in the 
doorway. 

When Hobbleshank and the woman met, it 
was, as their looks told, as those who have 
been parted for years — between whom some 
mighty secret is kept, and who have some 
great trouble in common. They talked ear- 
nestly together — the woman and the forlorn- 
looking pauper asserting something over and 
over again, it seemed, to which the old man 
would not yield, nor would he, altogether, 
withhhold belief. 

The diners were, meanwhile, fairly embark- 
ed ; the stream of mirth was full ; as it flowed 
up and down the board it sometimes attained 
a rapid head, carrying all before it in a gene- 
ral glee ; or paused in little eddies and islets of 
drinkers, where it tarried and circled round 
and round within itself. There was one, a 
roaring whirlpool of jockeys from the avenue, 
who, with loud jokes and broad gusts of anec- 
dote, kept up a constant pother where they sat. 
Then, farther on, there was a more quiet fry 
of ex-sheriffs, fine, rosy fellows — hanging and 
jumping of the rope are your healthiest exer- 
cises, it would seem ; and then, in a stormier 
latitude, a shoal of aldermen, who kept up in 
their drink windy discussions without end. 
Among these, Puffer, as the jollity grew apace, 
was called down from his station near Mr. 
Gallipot, and it brought him within earshot of 
the group in the passage, who had watched 
him so strangely in his speech. They were 
still there, their heads close together, Hob- 
bleshank's central, and busiest of all; and 
they still turned, from time to time, in their 
talk, and regarded Puffer with the same strange 
gaze. Whatever Puffer, with an ear sharpened 
by a curiosity he could not control, caught, was 
so straggling and disjointed, that it conveyed 
to his mind no distinct impression of their pur- 
pose. Their conference seemed, at length, at 
an end. 

" I think as you do," he heard Hobbleshank 
whispering to the others, looking from the 
woman to the stranger, and then toward him- 
self; " I thought so from the first ; but I have 
been too often mistaken, I could not bear to be 
wrong again — it would kill me, Hetty ; let us 
be cautious." 

He muttered something in a broken and 
earnest tone — Puffer could see his lips grow 
pale and quiver as he spoke — and, leaving 
them, he hurried up the room and took the 
place at the table among the friends he had 
left. 

There was no pause in the mirth of the ma- 
gistrates and their guests ; fresh baskets were 
broached every minute, a tipsy song roared 
out, and the adults there present attached 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



271 



themselves to the long-necked flasks as if they 
had been brought there to be nursed on claret 
and champagne at the city charge. It was a 
relief to Puffer to hear what passed among the 
nurslings in their probation. Obliquely from 
him up the table, an arm's-length or two, there 
were a couple whose nursing seemed to try 
the constitution to an alarming pitch ; and in- 
stead of being benefited, in any degree, by the 
dark spirit with whom they held so many close 
and earnest conferences, they always got back 
from the interview less robust in person and 
demeanor than ever. 

" You know very well, Bill, that I o'rt to 
have that — place if any — chap has it," said 
one of them, a fine, large, sturdy-looking fellow, 
for a nursling, speaking slowly, out of respect 
to the understanding of his friend. " D — n it, 
Bill, dep'ty street-inspector — it's chalk for 
cheese — for one what's done — what — what — 
what" 

His chin knocked upon his breast, and he 
kept asking himself, for five minutes or more, 
what it was. 

" I'm the man that's got up twelve public 
meetings in the course of an humble life," said 
the other, at the top of his voice, and, looking 
around to call the attention of the company ; 
"carried banners in five processions; pall- 
bearer to the late devoted Alderman Smith; 
you know me, Mr. Gallipot ? Did you ever 
know a more ardent friend of his country than 
William Scraggs ? — Who'll sign this 'ere roll, 
for Billy Scraggs ?" And Mr. Scraggs pro- 
duced, from his breast-pocket, a soiled scroll, 
which he unfurled across the table, and hold- 
ing an end in his hand, he tumbled into the 
same shvmber that had already ingulfed his 
rival. 

After an interval of half an hour they wa- 
kened, one getting the advantage of the other 
by not more than a minute, and renewed the 
dispute for the inspectorship ; and after a brief 
and slightly confused statement of their claims, 
they lapsed back again into their dreams. 
There was no abatement in the spirit of the 
almshouse dinner. Even till midnight, speech- 
es were made by aldermen and laymen and ex- 
sheriffs. Healths — sometimes of individuals, 
sometimes a broadside of the table against broad- 
side — were drained, and Puffer, finding that a 
sadness had crept upon him, out of all harmo- 
ny with their mirth, quietly withdrew, leaving i 
his three committee-men on their feet together, ' 
and at an advanced stage of champagne, de- 
livering speeches against each other; and his 
honor, the mayor, with his bottle-holders, 
squeezing lemons vehemently, at each side of 
him, brewing a dunk for which he was fa- 
mous. 

In the open air, he found the doorway and 
high steps thronged with pan per?, who had 
kept themselves from bed that they might lis- 
ten to the uproar and jollification of their mas- 
ters. " It was such precious fun," one of them 
said, " to see the corporation feeding its corpo- 



ration, and getting high on taxes and brown 
bread." Puffer thought he had escaped unob- 
served, but, as he entered the carriage, he 
found Hobbleshank at his side, asking to bear 
him company. 

" To be sure," answered Puffer, " I would 
rather ride back with one like you than the 
three I came up with." 

The old man smiled, but was silent, and this 
silence he maintained till they were half down 
the city. And when he began to speak, Puffer 
observed that his discourse was not of that in 
which either had an interest, but of remote 
and indifferent things, like one unwilling to 
speak of that which is nearest his heart, and 
who trifles in this way lest he betray himself. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE TRIAL OF MR. FYLER CLOSE. 

Two months from the burning of Close's 
row, a large-nosed man, with brandy-colored 
cheeks, was busy, at early morning, locking 
the hall gates, when a small old man shambled 
up, and, holding on the outside, accosted him. 

" Does the trial come on to day ?" he asked. 

" To be sure it does," answered the other, 
looking up, " didn't you know that ? A man 
with a augur-hole for an eye might see that. 
Look at them wagons over there," pointing 
with a key through the bars, into Chatham 
street. " When you see 'em taking in pies at 
that rate in them shops, there's a capital of- 
fence coming on up stairs. Them shop-keep- 
ers is growing blessed rich on murders and 
hommycides — the Oyer and Terminer demand 
for pies sells 'em out twice a day while the 
court sits." 

" How did he sleep last night ?" asked the 
old man. He did not mention him by name, 
but the other knew that he meant the prisoner. 

"Oh, beautiful, sir — very beautiful, sir!" 
answered the large-nosed gate-fastener. " Wc 
ha'n't had a lovelier prisoner sin' Johnson's 
day." 

An inexpressible spasm convulsed the coun- 
tenance of the questioner, which, being busy 
at the lock, the officer did not observe. 

" No dreams," resumed the old man, hold- 
in? hard upon the bars. '•' Wasn't he troubled 
a little in his sleep, sir ?" 

He watched the answer with a breathless 
look. 

" Not a bit of it ; not as much as 'ud stir a 
eye-lash. I was in the passage by his cell the 
better part of the night, and his breath corned 
and went like a infant's." 

The old man's features foil ; he had evident- 
ly expected a different report. The gates were 
by this time all fastened Hose and sure— the 
gau -fastener hurried away, clattering nil 
— and, sroin? round where an opening was left 
fill pasatri in and iu:t, the old man went in. 



272 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



Climbing the winding stairs, he proceeded 
along the upper passage, and took his station 
by the court-room door, where he hoped the 
prisoner would pass. For a long time he stood 
there alone, starting at every sound that broke 
through the hall. By-and-by they began to 
come in, one by one, and cluster about the 
door ; and by ten o'clock the passages were all 
filled. Presently, black-topped staves were 
seen bobbing up and down in the press, and 
forcing their wa}', with much jostling and an 
occasional oath, the officers reached the door, 
and thrusting the crowd back, held them in 
check til] the door was unbarred from within. 

The crowd poured in in a flood-tide, bearing 
the officers every now and then from their post 
at the door, into the very centre of the court- 
room. In less than a quarter of an hour the 
room was overflowed, crowded in every corner, 
all the seats back, from the rail to the ceiling, 
all the passages, and some stood perched in the 
window-seats and about the cornices, holding 
on by what they could. The prisoner was al- j 
ready at the table inside of the bar ; he had J 
been got in by a private stairs ; and when the \ 
first rush of the crowd broke in, he started in \ 
his chair and looked wildly round, supposing, | 
for the moment, they had been let in to tear 
him in pieces. 

He soon recovered himself, and turning his 
seat about, watched them as they came in, one 
by one. Among the first to enter was the 
small old man, upon whom, from the first mo- j 
ment, Fyler fixed his eye, and turning from 
time to time, watched him in the crowd. Was 
that man abroad yet ? his look seemed to say. 
Fyler thought he had driven his plans so keen- : 
ly, that he must have been, by this time, clean 
out of his wits, and pent up in some cell of 
madmen or other. 

Presently the judge entered — a long, with- ; 
ered man, with a face as dry and yellow as a I 
mummy, and a shrub of dusty-looking hair, j 
standing off from his crown in every direction. j 
Fyler looked up into his face as he passed, 
and smiled ; the judge, without taking the 
slightest heed of the prisoner, proceeded to his 
place upon the bench, where he busied himself | 
with a newspaper. In a couple of minutes 
more he was followed by a large, red-cheeked 
man, in a predominant shirt-collar, and a sup- . 
pie, small man, who, bestowing themselves up- 1 
on chairs on either side of his honor, looked as 
judicial and dignified as a pair of weazel-eyes J 
and a highly-starched shirt-collar would allow | 
them. The court was in session ; and, order ; 
being demanded by the presiding judge, there ; 
was, for five minutes, an incessant running 
to and fro of officers through every part of 
the court-room, crying, "Hats off!'' and wa- ; 
king up every echo that had slept over-night 
in the angles and cobwebs of the chamber. I 
One rushed into the outer passage, shouting, , 
" Silence I" with such vehemence, *that one : 
might have supposed he was calling, in his 
distraction, for a personal friend instead of a | 



genius or spirit with which he was on such 
doubtful terms of understanding. The court 
was duly opened by proclamation, and at the 
judge's bidding a crier of the court, a white- 
haired old fellow, began turning a wheel, and 
drawing ballots on which were written the 
names of the persons summoned for the present 
trial. 

One by one, as they were summoned, they 
emerged from the crowd and were sworn. Some 
had read the newspapers, and couldn't sit on 
the jury without hanging the prisoner. One 
had a theory about heads which would compel 
him to acquit the prisoner ; and another a the- 
ory about faces which would oblige him to 
convict. There was a keeper of a livery-sta- 
ble that never knew a man nor a horse with 
such an eye as the prisoner's, that wasn't 
vicious. More than a hundred were dismissed 
in this way. At last, by dint of baffling the 
point, and hunting scruples in at a needle's 
point, and out at an eyelet-hole, they succeed- 
ed in obtaining twelve men, who, though they 
read the newspapers, didn't believe a word of 
them; who knew the facts of the case, but 
hadn't formed an opinion ; and who, though 
they had conscientious doubts about hanging, 
in any case, thought they could string a man 
up if the law required it. 

The case was called — the prisoner was ar- 
raigned — and being helped to his feet by two 
officers at his side, was asked for his plea. 

" I'm a ruined man, sir !" answered Fyler, 
looking wildly around, " and I'd like to have 
a pint of beer !" 

Saying which he knocked his head through 
his hat, and, winked out at the top, at the 
judge, with all his might. 

" I see how it is," said the judge, coolly ; 
" remove his hat, officer — go on, Mr. District 
Attorney." 

The district attorney, who was for all the 
world just such another looking person as the 
judge, cut down two sizes — that is, he was as 
dry, as hard-featured, and thin-haired, but not 
so tall by a head — pulled down his waistcoat 
and opened the case. 

The crime of arson was a dreadful crime ; it 
had prevailed to an alarming extent in this 
community, and he called upon the jury in that 
box to say whether a stop ahould be put to it 
or not. Was there a more dreadful crime con- 
ceivable, gentlemen of the jury, than the one 
with which the prisoner at the bar was charg- 
ed ? Who was safe in this community if such 
things were allowed ? Fire, that terrible ele- 
ment, whose wing scathed wherever it swept 
(he detected in the jury-box a Presbyterian 
gentleman, who smiled at this allusion, and he 
worked it out at great length). Fire — the ac- 
credited agent of Omnipotence in balancing ac- 
counts with the world : the element by which 
temples, and palaces, and warehouses, were to 
be all wrapped into everlasting nothingness. He 
would be able to show the circumstances under 
which the buildings in question (he meant 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



273 



Close's row) were fired ; that it was an act of 
cool, fiendish, and black-hearted villany. That 
it had been premeditated for a long time, and 
that a moment had been chosen to put it in ex- 
ecution when a terrible loss of life must have 
ensued. He would show that jury that the 
prisoner at the bar was inspired by the spirit 
of a fiend, and had acted true to the spirit by 
which he was inspired. It was to be seen 
whether this- community would countenance 
such a spirit. He sat down, and the moment 
he struck the seat called out for J. Q. R. Sloat. 

Mr. J. Q. R. Sloat thereupon stepped for- 
ward, and proved to be a gentleman with sta- 
ring eyes, a pair of thickset whiskers, and ex- 
traordinary coolness of deportment. He took 
the witness's stand, and, sucking his teeth so- 
norously, was sworn. 

" You are an officer of police, Mr. Sloat ?" 
said the district attorney. 

" I am, sir," answered Mr. Sloat. 

" What do you know of the firing of the 
buildings called Close's row, on the 19th of 
June last ?" 

" I was a-walking about that time, at nine 
o'clock in the evening," answered Mr. Sloat, 
coaxing his whiskers with his hand, and ad- 
dressing himself to the jury, " along Madison 
street, in company with officer Smutch, when 
we brushed by a man in. a gray overcoat. 
* Smutch,' says I, when we had passed him a 
step or two, ' I smell brimstone !' ' So do I,' 
says Smutch, putting his fingers to his nose ; 
and here let me say, gentlemen of the jury, 
there isn't a more indefatigable officer" — 

" Never mind that,*' interrupted the attorney 
for the prisoner ; u you needn't puff the police, 



" Did you now arrest the prisoner ?" asked 
the judge, sharply. 

"We did not, sir," answered the officer; "but 
as luck would have it, when we got back there 
was a grand blaze of light ; the buildings was 
all in flames. ' The best thing that could have 
happened,' said Smutch to me, ' for now we'll 
be able to catch the prisoner when we see 
him.' < You're right,' says I, c and there he 
goes !' A man at that minute went by the al- 
ley, and run down Scammel street at the top 
of his speed. ' Now for it !' I cries to Smutch, 
and we started off. We run him pretty keen 
around four blocks, and got him at last into an 
engine-house." 

" Well, sir, you took him prisoner ?" said 
the judge, again. 

"No, "sir, it was a watchman, running to 
give the alarm," rejoined the witness. " But 
we chased two or three other men, in the 
course of the night, on suspicion ; when luck 
would have it, we thought of going back to the 
fire." 

" Where you took the prisoner, I believe ?" 
said the district attorney. 

" Not quite yet, sir ; there we saw the pris- 
oner, and there we watched him on suspicion; 
and seeing what I did, I felt justified, at last, 
in taking him into custody. He tried gammon, 
some, but Smutch and I was too much for him. 
I takes no credit to myself," concluded the 
witness, turning to the judge, "please your 
honor; it was Smutch that planned the whole 
thing. If it hadn't been for that indefatigable 
man" — But he was cut short again. 

The attorney for Fyler was a square-built 
man, with iron-gray locks, a determined eye 



we all know what they are !" And the pris- and look, and sat confronting the witness 



' through his evidence, with his coat-cuffs rolled 
back. 

" Now, sir," said he, leaving his seat and 
taking a place where he could put his face 
close to the witness, " do you mean to say that 
a police officer has sufficient knowledge of law 
to know how to arrest a criminal in a case of 
arson ? Answer, on your oath !" 

" Police officers know some things, as well 
as other folks," he replied, looking about the 
court to the constables on duty, for approval. 

"Now, tell me, sir — didn't the prisoner tell 
3'ou, at the time of his arrest, that he was Ba- 
rabbas, King of the Jews ?" 

" Yes, sir." 

" Yes, sir — and didn't he tell you that his 
mother was Mary Scott, the clear-stare her, in 
Republican alley ?" 

" He did." 

" And you knew his name was Close. One 
more question ; didn't he, when you seized 
him, order your arm to wither ?" 

" Yes, sir, he did, but I thought"— 

"Never mind what you thought— you forgot 

to mention these rather material circumstances 

played a couple of games of dominoes, and then — that'll do." 

walked back quietly, so as to come upon the Mr. Smutch beinc: next called upon the stand, 

prisoner unawares."^ | corroborated Mr. Sloat with a single exeep- 

S 



oner's attorney smiled knowingly upon the 
jury. 

"As I was saying when I was interfered 
with," resumed Mr. Sloat, rather impertinent- 
ly, " ' It's that man in the gray overcoat,' says 
I, ' and we'll track him.' The smell was strong 
upon him, and as Smutch and I's both quick of 
scent, it wasn't much to do that. The gray 
overcoat turned a corner, and went into an al- 
ley in Scammel street. Smutch and I followed. 
There the gray overcoat got down into an 
area, crept into a window, which was too small 
for Smutch and I to go in at, and we saw nothing 
more till there was a blaze in the middle of 
the floor, and the gray overcoat along-side of it, 
feeding it with shavings out of a basket." 

"Well, sir," said the judge, hurrying him 
along, " you waited till the person came out, 
and then seized him ?" 

" No, sir, begging your honor's pardon, no 
such thing," answered the heavy-whiskered 
witness, bristling up ; " < Smutch,' says I, * we'll 
walk away for an hour, and then be back and 
see what comes of this.' Smutch said 'By all 
means ;' and we went off to a porter-house and 



274 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



tion ; he said it was owing to Mr. Sloat's un- 
paralleled exertions and ingenuity that the pris- 
oner was arrested, and not to himself. 

During the testimony of these witnesses, Fy- 
ler was restless and uneasy, constantly mur- 
muring to himself, putting on and taking off 
his dilapidated hat, and dancing his feet upon 
the floor. Having at length drawn the atten- 
tion of the court upon him, the judge asked 
whether there was not some way to restrain 
the prisoner. Fyler's counsel answered that 
he believed there was a young man in court 
who was familiar with his ways, and who 
might perhaps be able to pacify him. Where- 
upon Ishmael Small being summoned, came 
forward from behind a pillar, whence he had 
watched the proceedings of Fyler with un- 
bounded delight. 

" Do you know this man ?" said the judge. 

" A little, sir," answered Ishmael, scraping 
the floor with his foot, and waving his crape- 
bound hat. Ishmael always wore a weed in 
public ; it was more respectable, and made the 
public sympathize with him as a bereaved 
young gentleman. 

" Can you mention anything to make him 
quiet V 3 

" Nothin'll make him comfortable," answer- 
ed Mr. Small, with the air of an oracle, for the 
eyes of the whole court room were upon him — 
" but givin' him a small bag of gold to look 
at, containin' about five hundred dollars." 

A small bag of gold was accordingly sent 
for at a neighboring broker's, in the name of 
the Oyer and Terminer ; and being brought in 
was set down in front of Fyler. 

" You'll have to shake it, sir," added Ish- 
mael, appealing to the court, " to satisfy him 
it's the full sum." 

An officer was directed to put him at rest on 
that point. As soon as he was assured it con- 
tained honest metal to the proper amount, he 
fixed his eyes upon the black brand on the out- 
side of the bag, and was quiet. 

The cobbler, one of the tenants of the row, 
was called to the stand. He set out in his 
testimony with a protest against the organ- 
ization of the court ; avowed a hostility to all 
courts and forms of law — against all proceed- 
ings, officers, sheriffs, and appurtenances of 
law ; and was at last brought to admit, which 
was the gist of his evidence, that with his wife 
he was in Close's row on the evening it was 
fired. 

The lightning-maker proved a much more 
exuberant and productive witness. He expa- 
tiated upon the domestic comforts he had en- 
joyed ; shed tears when he spoke of his two 
children and his lame wife ; and concluded by 
saying he never was more taken aback in his 
life, except once, and that was when Commo- 
dore Decatur was struck in the pit of his stom- 
ach with a couple of quarts of lightning, off 
Algiers. When called upon, in his cross-ex- 
amination, to explain this incident in Decatur's 
-career, he stated that it occurred at the thea- 



tre, by mistake, when Mr. Smirk, an intem- 
perate gentleman, performed the part of th« 
commodore. 

Two or three other tenants of the row were 
brought forward, who showed that they wert 
at home in the row when the fire occurred ; 
and the district attorney, raising his voice, 
said, " We rest !" 

Springing from his chair at this summons, 
Counsellor Blast unslipped the knot of his tape- 
tied bundle of papers, and dashed them side- 
wise with his hand so that they spread out over 
the table. Confirming the backward roll of his 
coat-cuffs, and dotting the floor with a discharge 
of tobacco pellets, he addressed the jury, in a 
manner peculiar to himself — sometimes starting 
forward with double fists, as if it were his pur- 
pose to challenge the twelve respectable gen- 
tlemen before him to a personal encounter, and 
sometimes ranging up and down their front, 
discharging a broadside of invective into the 
jury-box as he passed. 

He had never risen, he said, under so great 
a sense of embarrassment in his life, as in the 
present case. His client, the prisoner at the 
bar — a poor, friendless old man — looked to him 
as his last hope, the final wall and barrier be- 
tween himself and the grave that yawned for 
him. It had never been his fortune to present 
to a court and jury a case like this one, so full 
of all that appealed to the noblest sympathies 
of our nature. They beheld before them, in 
the prisoner at the bar, a melancholy case — one 
of the most melancholy he had ever known — 
of mania in a subdued form. The unfortunate 
prisoner was non compos mentis, as he meant to 
show, at the time of the alleged crime ; and 
they now saw in him a wreck of what he had 
been. 

Fyler Close, gentlemen, the prisoner at the 
bar, was once blessed with peace, and health, 
and competence, like you ; but now what is 
he ? Behold for yourselves ! (Fyler was busy 
eating the end of a pipe-stem which had been 
handed to him by his counsel before he rose to 
open the case.) His faculties are all in disor- 
der ; his eye has lost its lustre ; in a word, 
reason has left its throne. By a series of mis- 
fortunes, gentlemen, which it is out of the pow- 
er of the best of us to foresee and guard against, 
this unfortunate prisoner has been deprived of 
all he possessed — and at one time it was con- 
siderable. It was not necessary to go into the 
particulars of this loss ; it was enough to say 
he stood before them that day pleading in be- 
half of a starving, a penniless, and a houseless 
lunatic. And how was this lunacy brought 
on ? Why, gentlemen, as you have doubtless 
anticipated me, by the peculiar state of his pe- 
cuniary affairs. It was four weeks and four 
days, as they would show by competent testi- 
mony, from the commission of the alleged act 
of firing, since the belief first entered the mind 
of the prisoner that he, the prisoner, was an 
angel of light. We will show you, gentlemen, 
that he acted up to the belief; and we will 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



175 



show you further, that he. the prisoner, was of 
the opinion that when he had served out a 
brief apprenticeship of four weeks and four 
days as a rag-picker — being all this time an 
angel of light — he would become a regularly 
licensed angel of Fire, empowered and author- 
ized to burn buildings and kindle conflagrations 
wherever he chose, throughout the city of New 
York. It does not appear that his patent ex- 
tended beyond that. And now, gentlemen, 
continued the learned counsel, raising his voice, 
after a visit to his papers at the table ; and 
now, gentlemen, how is this borne out ? Why, 
gentlemen, by the most incontrovertible proofs 
that all his habits were regulated on this be- 
lief ; that he conformed, as far as it is in sinful 
man to conform (this was for the Presbyterian 
juror, in ofiset to the prosecuting attorney's 
appeal), to his angelic calling. He had from 
that time forward led the life of a pure spirit 
in all his private acts, serving out only his pro- 
bation as a rag-picker. If he succeeded in 
showing this — if he succeeded, as he believed 
he would, in proving that the insane belief had 
taken entire possession of the prisoners mind 
— how much soever it might conflict with the 
policy and interests of insurers, increasing the 
risk, as it did, of tires — how much soever it put 
to the blush the religions portion of the com- 
munity, who had had in this poor, aged rag- 
picker, an example of true and beautiful hu- 
mility — he was sure of their verdict. 

Mr. Clerk, call Ishmael Small. 

Counsellor Blast retreated to his chair, and 
Ishmael, emerging from a knot of officers with 
whom he had been conferring, passed Fyler, 
casting a mournful look upon him as he went 
by, and appeared in the witness's stand, with 
his crape-wreathed hat upon his head. 

The clerk presented the Bible, and hinted a 
removal of the hat. 

* Conscientious scruples, your honor, " said 
Ishmael. looking toward the judge, and laying 
his right hand upon his breast. " The 'poc- 
ryphal — give me the *pocryphal." 

It being found, on investigation, that the 
Apocryphal books were not included in the 
court version, Mr. Small consented to compro- 
mise matters by spreading his palm upon the 
blank pages between the Testaments, and was 
sworn. 

" Be good enough to tell the court and jury, 
Mr. Small," said Fyler's counsel, Ci what you 
know of the belief that has got possession of 
this unfortunate prisoner's mind. When did 
vou first begin to observe svmptoms of his mal- 
ady r 

*■ Pm inclined to think,*' answered Ishmael, 
u it's a long time since he thought he VH I 
angel of light ; but it's only lately — about four 
weeks and four days before the fire, u 
mentioned in that eloquent openin' of yours — 
since he took up the business regularly." 

" He seemed to consider himself a sort of an- 
gel a lone time n;;o. did he f 

"He did, sir, judgin' by his conduct," con- 



tinued Mr. Small. « He seemed to despise all 
sorts of plain food : and as for roast beef and 
, baked 'taters, the very smell of the family- 
dishes from the baker's down stairs, almost 
J drove him mad." 

li How was it about fire and clothing ?" 

" Worse and worse. To see how he 'ud sit 

in that room o' his in the sharp, blowy nights, 

; countin" the bare bricks in the fire-place, one 

| would ha* thought there never was such a an 

| gel for standing low temp-ratures ; and as for 

i clothing, he thought flannels was invented by 

: a man out o' work. He was a great advocate, 

when he was himself, for cut-down shoes and 

round-jackets. That was Mr. Close's model 

for a well-dressed angel." 

Ci Did Mr. Close ever assume such a dress 
himself ?" 

" He did, sir, when he began to turn out as a 
rag-picker. He was to be a rag-picker four 
weeks and four days, and then he was to be a 
angel of fire." 

« That will do, Mr. Small," said Counsellor 
Blast ; " you may go down." 

" Stop a minute,-'* cried the prosecutor, as 
Ishmael was stepping from the stand. '* Do 
you say, sir — recollect you are in a court of 
justice" — 

■ I do, sir,*'* interrupted Ishmael, " and I feel 
a veneration for that plaster-head over there 
that I caivt express." 

The audience turned in a body toward the 
nondescript bust fixed in a niche of the oppo- 
site wall, a*nd laughed. The court ordered si- 
lence ; the officers shouted silence ; and an 
echo, to the same effect, came from the niche 
where the cast in plaster stood ; and the district 
attorney put his question directly — 

'•'Do you say that this prisoners conduct has 
been, since the time you speak of, that of an 
angel ?" 

" Not havin' the pleasure of a personal ac- 
quaintance in that sphere of life," answered 
Ishmael, '• I wouldn't say.** 

••' I will ask you," continued the district at- 
torney, " if you don't know that he was in the 
habit of taking heavy usury on money which 
he loaned f 

'•' If he did take twenty or thirty per cent, 
from a seedy feller, now and then, he learned 
it from a church-member that he knew — and 
he was the most ansel-like gentleman that ever 
come to see him. The church-member used to 
tell Fyler he felt the cherrybim's wings a-fan- 
nins him." 

" Then you consider the prisoner an angel, 
do yon .'" 

" All things considered," answered Ishmael, 
pondering and turning his hat in his han 
do. If there ever was a aagd on earth, he 
was one." 

"It's a lie; he was a thumping v i 1 ] 
cried a voice in the crowd. 

The court started to their feet ; the hi 
sprang up and turned around; the 1 
to and fro, shaking their stave*, and ou lh« 



276 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



lookout for the offender ; there was a -universal 
commotion. 

"Bring that man up!" shouted the chief 
judge. The officers echoed the order from one 
to the other ; every eye was hunting for the 
culprit — yet he was not found. 

The prisoner knew the voice well, and would 
have named the peace-breaker if he had dared. 
It was the little old man who had been the 
first at the hall gates in the morning. After a 
while the excitement subsided, and they re- 
sumed business. 

" I'd like to have that gentleman as a wit- 
ness," said the state's attorney to a brother 
counsellor, in a whisper ; and then to Ishmael, 
who was withdrawing from the stand — "Are 
you related, in any way, to the prisoner, Mr. 
Small ?" 

" I call him uncle, sir, sometimes," answered 
Ishmael, falling stupid, suddenly, at the ques- 
tion; "I'd call you uncle, sir, if you'd let 
me." 

"Has it ever been suggested to you that 
there's a family likeness between you and the 
prisoner ?" 

"A family likeness," exclaimed Ishmael, 
" between me, a sinful eater of cutlets, and 
that pure-minded old gentleman that lives on 
fresh air and sea-biscuit ! Don't mention sich 
a thing again, sir ; you hurt my feelings !" 

" I see how it is," said the district attorney ; 
"you may go down, sir." 

Ishmael touched his hat to the judge, and 
making a graceful bow to the court-room gen- 
erally, descended to common life, and resumed 
his post as an observer, as before. 

The next that appeared in behalf of the de- 
fence, was a sharp-eyed little man (the dealer 
in crockery, whom Fyler had foreseen as a wit- 
ness), who hopped upon the stand, and was 
very uneasy till he was sworn ; a rite which 
he seemed to enjoy. 

" You know the prisoner, I believe," sug- 
gested Fyler's counsel. 

" I do, sir," answered the crockery-dealer, 
fastening upon the rail before him with both 
hands, and jerking his body back and forth as 
he delivered his testimony. " His name is Fy- 
ler Close ; he lives in Pell street, up one pair 
of stairs ; there's a bakery underneath, with a 
back yard ; there's a cistern in the yard, but 
the water isn't good — that's owing to pigeon- 
houses in the next street ; there isn't a finer 
collection of pigeons in the city, however — the 
owner's a potter baker in Doyer street — a large 
man, with a wen on his nose" — 

" Stop, stop !" cried Mr. District Attorney 
Pudlin, as he would have done to a runaway 
horse ; " you must come a little nearer the 
case ; we don't want Longworth's Directory." 

" Be good enough to tell the court," resumed 
Counsellor Blast, " what you know of an aber- 
ration of mind on the part of the prisoner. An- 
swer directly, if you please." 

" I will answer directly," said the crockery- 
dealer ; " and I know this much : I was stand- 



ing in my shop-door — if the court please — in 
the month of June last, looking about me, as 
is my custom, when about two blocks off I 
saw" — 

" Two blocks ?" interrupted the district at- 
torney. 

" Yes, sir, two blocks !" retorted the crock- 
ery-dealer, rather angrily ; " I saw a man en- 
gaged — he was about five feet high, a little 
under, perhaps — the sun was setting up the 
street — and I saw his face was as pale as a 
white china dinner-set ; he had on a blue round- 
about, a broad straw hat, and he was running 
backward and forward in the gutters at a ter- 
rible rate, stooping down and raising up like 
whalebone. ' I see how it is,' said I to myself; 
' judging by the rate at which he's at work, 
that's an insane rag-picker.' Presently he 
works his way down directly opposite my shop 
— I keep in Division street, gentlemen of the 
jury, No. 19|, chinaware, earthernware, and 
everything, of the first quality — and by that 
time his basket was brim-full and running over 
the top of the handle ; and I saw it was the 
prisoner at the bar." 

" Well, sir, was there anything peculiar in 
his look at that time ?" asked the judge. 

" There was, sir ; he looked sidewise out of 
both eyes at once. I saw the mania was com- 
ing on him strong, for he began to fumble with 
his jacket buttons, and whistled for an invisi- 
ble dog." 

" What was the dog's name, sir ; perhaps 
you'll be good enough to give us that," said 
the prosecuting attorney, looking at the jury 
and then at the witness. 

" He didn't whistle it quite slow enough to 
make it out," answered the omniscient dealer 
in crockery ; " but as soon as he whistled, and 
the dog didn't come, I know he dashed his 
basket upon the ground, and running backward 
first, came back to the basket again with such 
a supernatural leap as I shall never see again 
while I live ; and this he kept doing till it was 
broad dark, and when I went in to strengthen 
myself with a cup of tea and a piece of toast 
(I like my toast done brown, please your honor), 
against the shock of such a pitiful sight, leav- 
ing my shop-boy to keep an eye on it. When 
I got back, the basket was gone, the prisoner 
at the bar was gone ; and when I came to ques- 
tion the boy, I found out" — 

" That will do, sir," interrupted the district 
attorney, bringing him to a dead pause ; " we 
don't want to know what your boy said, or 
what your boy saw. Now, sir, if your friends 
can spare you, I'll put a question or two to you." 

" He's your witness, sir," said Counsellor 
Blast, waiving his hand over the table. 

"Now, sir, you say you judged the prisoner 
to be insane from the rate at which he was 
picking rags into his basket when you first saw 
him. How fast would that be, sir ?" 

"Why, sir," rejoined the witness, not taken 
by surprise in the least, " a sane man might 
pick a ton a day." 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



277 



" Then an insane one would pick a ton and 
a quarter, perhaps ?" 

"No, I don't think that would be conclusive 
of his insanity — a ton and a half might." 

"Will you be good enough to account for 
the remarkable observation you have made ; 
how do you explain it ?" smiling to the jury. 

" Why, sir, if the court will pardon me, I 
should say it was owing to an increased ner- 
vous vitality in the fingers" — 

" You needn't go any farther," interrupted 
Counsellor Blast ; " We are done with you, 
and much obliged. We have a medical gen- 
tleman here, Mr. District Attorney, who will 
perhaps be able to put your mind at ease on 
that point. Will Dr. Mash be good enough to 
take the stand ?" 

At this request a stout gentleman in a red 
face, a red camlet wrapper, as much overrun 
with frogs as the land of Egypt itself, and bear- 
ing in his hand a burly cane with an ivory 
head, came forward, and climbing into the wit- 
ness-station, propped himself with both hands 
upon the cane, and looked steadily at Fyler's 
counsel, in waiting for a question. He was 
evidently loaded to the very mouth. 

" Dr. Mash is so well known that I will not 
put the usual questions as to how long he has 
practised, &c," said Fyler's counsel ; " will 
you be good enough to oblige the court, Dr. 
Mash, with a definition of insanity ?" 

"Insanity, I would say, sir," answered the 
doctor, swelling till he strained his very red 
camlet coat-fastenings, with professional pride ; 
" insanity, I would say, sir, is a general loose- 
ness or incoherence of ideas, brought on by 
the overaction of the brain. For instance" — 

" Ah," interposed Fyler's counsel with def- 
erence, " you will favor the court by giving 
an example." 

"I will, sir," rejoined the doctor; " for in- 
stance, if the district attorney, there, should 
become so engrossed in his duties as a public 
officer, as to put the fines he collects into his 
own pocket, instead of carrying them to the 
city treasury; that would be a case of limit- 
ed mania, or partial insanity." 

There was a general laugh at this view of 
the case. 

" That would be an example of looseness of 
ideas brought on by overaction of the brain, 
would it ?" asked Counsellor Blast, grinning. 
" How would that apply to the case of the pris- 
oner ?" 

" Very clearly, sir," answered the doctor ; 
" the sudden loss of fortune, fixing the mind 
upon one point constantly — that of the loss in 
question — would exhaust the recuperative pow- 
ers of the other faculties; and the conse- 
quence would be, that, in a very short time, 
the brain would go by the board." 

" Have you had opportunities of observing 
the deportment of the prisoner before to-day \ u 

"I have, sir; and I am decidedly of opin- 
ion, as I was then, that he is disordered in rea- 
18 



son. I have seen him in the public streets, 
and such were my convictions as a profession- 
al man, that I thought the public safety re- 
quired that he should be lodged in an asylum." 

« That's all, Dr. Mash." 

" Stop a minute, sir," cried Mr. Attorney 
Pudlin ; " perhaps you will be good enough to 
tell us who first called your attention to the 
lunacy of the prisoner ?" 

" I think it was the young gentleman on the 
stand this morning," answered the doctor. 

" You think ? — you know it was, Dr. Mash," 
pursued the district attorney ; " and now, tell 
me, sir, hadn't you a suspicion all along that 
this was a got-up thing between the prisoner 
and that young gentleman ?" 

" Not the slightest," said the learned doctor. 
"He seemed to be a benevolent young person, 
who meant well by the community — and I gave 
him a certificate of prisoner's lunacy." 

At this there was another general laugh 
through the court-room ; everybody that had 
seen Ishmael seeming to be pretty thoroughly 
satisfied that he was badly treated when he was 
called a philanthropist. 

" You did, eh ?" said the district attorney ; 
" then the sheep was wronged that was killed 
to furnish your diploma : we are done with 
you — you are not wanted any more." 

Dr. Mash went down, clinging to his cane 
in his vexation till the sweat poured from his 
brow. 

" As it may be as well to set the jury right 
on this question of insanity, I'd like to put a 
question or two to Dr. Parsley, if he is in 
court," said Mr. Attorney Pudlin. 

Dr. Parsley, being called, came forward 
briskly. He was a little bald-headed man, 
with glasses, and a nose as red and shining as 
a cherry. He hopped into the witness-stand 
smartly — and having his coat buttoned, and a 
slight shrub of hair brushed away from either 
side of his head, to give him a more formida- 
ble appearance — he stood ready for question- 
ing. 

" Dr. Parsley, will you be good enough to 
give the court your definition of insanity ?" 
asked the district attorney. 

" With pleasure," answered the bald-headed 
doctor, speaking up ; " insanity, according to 
my notion, is a general concentration, not a 
looseness, of ideas, superinduced by the apathy 
or imperfect action of the rest of the brain." 

"Do you think the prisoner insane, from 
what you have heard ?" 

" I do not, sir." 

"Will you be good enough to tell the court 
and jury, Dr. Parsley, why yuu think the pris- 
oner not insane ?" 

"I will, sir, with great pleasure," an- 
the doctor. " It appears, fioin a part ol i 
timony, that the prisoner, in his supposed at- 
tacks of the disea.-e, jumped haekward and for- 
ward over a basket. It doea not appear that 
he ever jumped into the basket. Now, i 



278 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



men — as far as my observation extends, and it 
has been by no means limited — always jump 
into a basket, when they get a chance." 

" He is your witness," said the district at 
torney. 

"One question, only, doctor. How does 
that agree with your definition ?" asked Coun- 
sellor Blast. 

"Well enough — in this way, sir. If his 
mind had been concentrated, or overtasked to 
an insane degree, he must have jumped into 
the basket." 

The case was now mainly closed, and a clerk 
of the Phcenix company being called only to 
show that the buildings in question belonged 
to Fyler Close, and had been insured for a 
handsome sum in that company, rather more, 
in fact, than their real value ; the court sug- 
gested that it was ready to hear the summing- 
up of the prisoner's counsel. The plea for 
Fyler was brief: — he was an old man; he 
had lost his all ; he was before them a melan- 
choly spectacle of dethroned reason ; a ver- 
dict of guilty would be a judicial murder ; and 
he appealed to them as humane men — men 
having grandfathers and old uncles, to deal to 
the prisoner justice tempered with mercy. 

The district attorney — hoisting and lower- 
ing his waistcoat incessantly, in the intensity 
of his eloquence — followed at greater length. 

He had proved the arson beyond all ques- 
tion; the prisoner's counsel had yielded that 
point ; and now, as for the insanity, he regard- 
ed it as a fetch from beginning to end — there 
were certain eccentricities in the prisoner, to 
be sure, but not more than an old apple-wo- 
man exhibited every day in the year. There 
was cunning, he was inclined to think, mixed 
with the prisoner's madness. Did you observe, 
gentlemen, in opening this case, how silent 
the prisoner was when his own counsel was 
before you ? and yet, when I addressed you, 
you recollect he was as busy as he could well 
be, crushing his teeth and kicking the table in 
the legs. You can draw your own inference 
from that, gentlemen. I had expected to prove 
that the young gentleman who appeared on the 
stand, was more nearly connected with the 
prisoner by ties of blood than he was willing 
to admit ; that a corrupt understanding existed 
between them in relation to the circumstances 
of the present case, there could be no reasona- 
ble doubt. I have now done my duty, gentle- 
men of the jury, as prosecuting officer, and it on- 
ly remains for you, as good citizens, to do yours. 

Calling an officer to him, and whispering 
him to bring a tumbler of brown-stout, by the 
private stairs, and place it in the folds of the 
ermine — the red curtain behind him — to be 
ready when he was through, the long judge 
rose from his chair, drawing himself out, joint 
by joint, and proceeded to charge the jury. As 
the sole object of the long judge seemed to be 
to wrap the case up in a swathing of word3 
and generalities, to prevent its taking cold, it 
would be impossible to do him anything like 



justice in a report. The result was, that af- 
ter he had been on his legs better than two 
hours, when the clock numbered toward mid- 
night, the jury — all abroad as to the facts, the 
law, and the equity — were put in charge of an 
officer and led off through a door into a small, 
dusty, cobwebbed, candle-lighted room, where 
they were locked in, in company with a small 
square table, to meditate upon the case. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



THE JURY-ROOM. 



For the first few minutes after they entered 
the jury-room, not a word was spoken ; they 
sat around the square table, which just held 
twelve, with their heads toward the centre, 
watching each other's faces sharply for the 
first glimpses of a verdict. 

A spider's thread fell from the ceiling and 
hung dangling above the table, bearing a fly 
struggling at its end. 

" Guilty, or not guilty, gentlemen ?" said 
the foreman, a close-shaven, blue-faced man, 
with glittering eyes, glancing round the board 
as he put the question by way of breaking 
ground. 

" Guilty, for one !" answered a fat citizen 
on his right hand, sweeping the struggling fly 
into his hat, which he produced suddenly from 
behind his chair. " We must have an exam- 
ple, gentlemen. The last three capital indict- 
ments got off, and now it's the sheriff's turn 
for a pull. We must have an example." 

" Three for breeders and the fourth to the 
bull-ring," spoke up a gentleman with a deep 
chest and brawny arms. " That's the rule at 
the slaughterhouse ; we always follow it — and 
so I say guilty, if the rest's agreeable." 

But the rest were not agreeable ; and they 
launched into an elaborate and comprehensive 
discussion of the case, led on by a high-cheeked 
gentleman in a white neckcloth, who begged 
to ask whether any one there was prepared to 
say whether angels could, under any circum- 
stances, become rag-pickers. That was the 
gist of the case. There might be angels of 
fire — he had heard an excellent discourse on 
that subject in the Brick church — and that 
would account for the prisoner's burning the 
buildings. He had been rather pleased with 
the district attorney's calling Fyler Close the 
demon of that element ; but then, would it be 
in character for a demon to go about with a 
basket and a hooked stick ? He couldn't see 
into it just yet — he would like to hear the opin- 
ion of the other gentlemen of the jury on that 
point. 

" It isn't always easy to tell them insane 
chaps at first sight," pursued another, a short 
juror, who, resting his elbows upon the table, 
looked out from between them with flat face 
and saucer eyes, fading far away in his head, 



PUFFER HOPKIXS. 



279 



like the hero of a country signboard. " There 
was one of 'em got into our house in Orchard 
street one day. and when he was caught he 
was at work on a stun' lemon with his teeth 
like vengeance. Xow. that was insanity at 
first view, but when we come to find his pock- 
ets full of silver spoons and table-knives, that 
was compos madia and the light of reason." 

11 How many stun' lemons would you have a 
feller eat, I'd like to know," retorted the 
deep-chested member, " to make it out a reg/- 
lar case ?" 

" One full-grown'd satisfy me," answered 
the signboard, w other gentlemen might require 
more." 

The board was unanimous on this point, one 
would be enough. 

" I'd have you take notice of one thing, gen- 
tlemen," said a thin little man, starting in at 
this moment from a corner of the table, with 
a nose like a tack, and eyes like a couple of 
small gimlet-holes. " There was a point in 
the testimony of that Sloat — the police officer 
— that's very important, and what's better, it 
escaped the district attorney, and the prison- 
er's counsel, and the very judge on the bench. 
Xow, I want your attention, gentlemen. You 
will recollect that Sloat testifies to a man in a 
gray overcoat going into an alley in Scammel 
street and getting into the basement of Close's 
row. That was the incendiary, no one doubts 
that. Very good. And then Sloat goes a lit- 
tle further, and says he is gone long enough to 
play a couple of games of dominoes : and when 
he gets back, he says a man went by the alley 
— mark that — went by the alley and down 
Scammel street. That wasn't the incendiary. 
was it ? By no means, gentlemen. Where 
was he then all this time ? I'll tell you." He 
drew his breath hard, and turned quite pale as 
he looked around. •• It's my opinion, gentle- 
men, the incendiary was roasted alive in the 
basement of them buildings."' 

There was a shudder through the jury-room: 
the jurors turned about to each other and 
said, " Who would have thought of that ?" 
and it was admitted on all hands to be a very 
plausible and acute conjecture and well-worthy 
of the gentleman in the eyelets and tack-shaped 
nose. 

••It can't be," said the fat citizen, balancing 
his hat in his two hands, and looking sternly 
at the fly in the bottom of the crown. u If you 
could only make that out, we might let this 
prisoner at the bar off. I can't believe he was 
so nicely caught. No, no, if that had been 
the case, somebody would have found the 
bones done brown and a pair of shoe-buckles. 
Don't cive way. I beg you, gentlemen, to the 
„• illusion. " 

And so sa\ iag, he knocked his hat uj>on his 
head and smothered the Hy. 

"I have iireal faith in that china-ware wit- 
said the gentleman in the signboard 
- riuht in that observation ol' 
his ; a man out of his wits always talks i 



I pie a couple o' hundred miles off, and whis- 

I ties for a invisible dog. I had a cousin, gen- 

i tlemen of the jury, that went mad as he was 

: coming through this 'ere Park one day ; he 
was a boat-captain, and was a comin' from his 

I sloop, and he asked the liberty-goddess a-top 
of the hall to take snuff with him. On recon- 
siderin', I think Fyler Close's is a case of lu- 
nat-ics." 

Two or three other jurors thought as much. 
" That mug of beer satisfied me," said one. 
" Would he ha* sp'ilt a new hat that his 

: counsel had bought to give him a respectable 
first appearance in court with, do you think, 

| Bill," said another, appealing to the last 
speaker, ••' if his head hadn't a been turned 
clean round ? It's a sone ninepin, that head o* 
his." 

•• Xow, gentlemen of the jury, you must ex- 
cuse me a few minutes, if you please," said a 
stout, rugged, hard-headed gentleman, with 
heavy eyebrows, rising at one end of the table, 
and thrusting back his skirts with both hands. 
*• This is a great moral question, whether the 
prisoner shall be hung or not. Am I right ?" 
•• You are !" f you are !" from several voices 
at the upper end of the table. " A great moral 
question, I say; and it's owing to a great moral 
accident that I am with you this day, for if I 
hadn't eaten too many tomcods for my supper 
last night, I should have been off in the seven 
o'clock boat this morning, to the anniversary 
of the Moral Reform at Philadelphia. Xow the 
community looks to us for action in this case. 
If this man escapes, who can be hung ? Where's 
the safety for life and property if we can't hang 
a man now and then ? Hanging's the moral 
lever of the world, and when the world's grown 
rotten by laying too much on one side, why. we 
hang a man and all comes right again. If we 
don't hang Fyler Close, he'll hang us — moral- 
ly, I mean." 

This was a director in a fire company, who 
had smuggled himself upon the jury by giving 
out that he was a gentleman, and blinded Fy- 
ler's counsel by hinting that he was doubtful 
of the policy of hanging ; what he said pro- 

. duced a sensation in the jury-room. The 
twelve judges began to put it to themselves, 

| some of them, whether premiums wouldn't go 
up if this house-burner escaped; others, that 
Xew York might be burned to 1 cinder if this 
wasn't put a stop too. somehow or other (there 
had been a brilliant and well-sustained series 
of fires for better than a twelvemonth") ; and 
others, that as he had failed to turn his insan- 
ity to the best account by hanging himself, they 

I would take it oil' his hands and attend to it — 
as he was a decrepit old gentleman — for him. 
ntlemen." said l 

; at this stage of foiling ; •• 1 think this i> a clear 
lOI the sheriff. The prisoner is an old 

' man; he has no friends — not a relation in the 
world, one oi' the witnesses said ; he's lost his 
property — and as for his w 

i they're worth. Xow, the next candidate that 



280 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



comes along may be a fine black-haired, rosy 
young fellow, who may have tickled a man 
with a sword-cane, or something of that sort, 
with a number of interesting sisters, an aged 
mother, and a crowd of afflicted connexions. 
Yon see what a plight we would be in if we 
should happen to be drawn on that jury. Are 
you agreed, gentlemen ?" 

There was not a little laying of heads to- 
gether ; discussion in couplets, triplets, and 
quadruplets ; and in the course of two hours 
more they agreed, and rose to call the officer 
to marshal them into court. 

" Stop a minute, gentlemen, if you please," 
said the fat citizen ; " this is a capital case, 
you will recollect, and it wouldn't be decent to 
go in under five hours." 

" He's right," said the foreman, and " you 
may do what you choose for an hour." 

Two of the jury withdrew to a bench at the 
side of the room, where, standing close to the 
wall, one of them planting his foot upon the 
bench and bending forward, entered upon a 
whispered interview. Two more remained at 
the table ; while the others grouped them- 
selves in a window looking forth upon the 
Park, in the rear of the hall, and amused them- 
selves by watching a crowd that had gathered 
there, under a lamp, and who began making 
signs and motions to them as soon as they 
showed themselves. The most constant occu- 
pation of the crowd seemed to be passing a fin- 
ger about the neck, and then jerking if up, as 
though pulling at a string, with a clicking sound, 
which — when once or twice they lifted the 
window, and as it seemed to be the most pop- 
ular and prevailing sound — could be distintly 
heard. 

" This is the luckiest thing that could have 
happened in the world," said one of the two 
jurors that had taken to the wall — the gentle- 
man in the sharp nose and weazel eyes — ad- 
dressing himself to the deep-chested juror with 
brawny arms, who was the other ; " I wanted to 
speak to you about that black-spotted heifer, 
and this is just the chance." 

" You couldn't speak on a more agreeable 
subject," retorted the deep-chested gentleman ; 
" but you mustn't expect me to take off the 
filing of a copper from the price ; what I asks 
at Bull's Head this morning, I asks now." 

"I know your way," rejoined the other; 
" you never come down even the value of a glass 
of beer to bind the bargain ; but it wasn't that 
— what grass was she fatted on ?" 

" Short blue," answered the deep-chested 
gentlemen, firmly. 

" Any salt meadow near ?" asked the other. 

" Not more than twenty acres," responded 
the deep-chested juror, with the air of a gen- 
tleman carrying all before him ; " and swim- 
min' a healthy run o' water, a rod wide, give 
the critter a bellyful any time." 

" Two years old the next full moon, and a 
cross of the Durham in her, I think ?" 



" Not a cross of the Durham, I tell you," 
answered the deep-chested gentleman, raising 
his voice a little, "but the Westchester bot- 
tom, and hasn't known a dry day nor a parched 
blade since she was calved." 

"No Durham blood? I'm sorry for that," 
said the sharp-nosed gentleman. " If you could 
throw me in that lamb I took a fancy to, we 
would close." 

" Throw you in the lamb ? that's a good 
one !" cried the deep-chested gentlemen, burst- 
ing into a laugh of scorn. " Why, I wouldn't 
throw you in the singeing of that lamb's wool. 
Only five-and-twenty for the prettiest heifer 
that ever hoofed it down the Third avenue — 
and throw you in a lamb ! That is a good one !" 
And he burst into another scornful laugh. 

" Well, well," said the sharp-nosed gentle- 
man, soothing him with a prompt compliance. 
" Drive her down to my stable as soon as the 
verdict's in." 

Meanwhile, the two that remained at the ta- 
ble were employed. 

" Have you got that 'ere box in your pocket, 
Bill ?" said one of them, a personage with a 
smooth, clean face, from which all the blood 
would seem to have been dried by the blazing 
gaslights under which he was accustomed to 
spend his time. 

" To be sure I have," answered the other, a 
gentleman of a similar cast of countenance, 
but a trifle stouter. "Did you ever catch 
Slicksey Bill a travelling without his tools ?" 
He produced a well-worn dicebox from his 
coat, and began rattling. " What shall it be ?" 

" The highest cast, ' guilty ' " said the other, 
" and three blanks shall let him go clear. 
That'll do, won't it ?" 

" Jist as good as the best. It's your first 
throw." 

The other took the box in hand, gave it a 
hoarse, rumbling shake — three fours. The 
other shook it sharply — two blanks. 

" Guilty, by ," they both said together. 

They then indulged themselves with a vari- 
ety of fancy throws, as to the state of the 
weather — the winning horse at the next Bea- 
con course — whether the recorder (a gentle- 
man in whom they felt a special interest), would 
die first, or be turned off the bench by the 
legislature. Every now and then they came 
back to the case of the prisoner, and — what 
was singular — the result was always the same. 

The hall clock struck three — the legitimate 
five hours were up — and the jurors gathered 
again around the table. 

" Gentlemen, are we agreed ?" asked the 
foreman. 

" We are !" answered the jury. 

" Yes, and what's queer, we've been trying 
it with dice, and every time it's turned out 
three twelves agin the prisoner ; so the result's 
right, any way you can fix it— isn't it so, Bill ?" 

"Exactly!" answered the gentleman ap- 
pealed to. The officer was summoned, and, 



PUFFER HOFKDTS. 



381 



patting himself at their head, they marched 
into the court-room with the air of men who 
ved well of the newspapers for their moral 
firmness ; and who, at the sacrifice of their 
own feelings, were rendering a great service to 
the community. 

The court-room was nearly a blank. The 
judge and the two aldermen had waited with ex- 
emplary patience the deliberations of the jury, 
and were now in their places to hear the result, 
s counsel, with a clerk, was there also ; 
and the district attorney, and the clerk of the 
court, and two or three officers and under- 
lings, loitering about. The prisoner hi 
sat at his table, a little pale, it seemed in the 
uncertain light, but unmoved. 

The crowd of spectators had dwindled as 
the clock struck ten — eleven — twelve. Mr. 
Ishmael Small, after tarrying an hour or two, 
had gone out with the others, and dispc : 
his leisure in playing a new game of ball, of 
his own devising, in the west side of the Park, 
with a crew of printers 5 boys from the neigh- 
boring offices. 

In the whole outer court-room there was 
but a single spectator, the little old man that 
had been the first at the hall gates in the morn- 
ing, who looked on, leaning against a remote 
column, at the judges, who, from that distance, 
seemed, in the dusky shade of the unsnufTed 
candles standing about them, like spectres grad- 
ually fading into the red curtain that hung at 
their back. 

•'•' Mr. Clerk, call the jury !" said the chief 
judge, in a voice which great usage on the trial 
and the incidents of the place made to sound 
sepulchral. 

The jury was called, man by man. 

" Arraign the prisoner V 9 in the same un- 
earthly and startling voice. 

The prisoner was arraigned. 

•'•' What say you — gentlemen of the jury — 
guilt v, or not guil 

« Guilty !'• 

Fyler started for a moment, but instantly re- 
covering himself, smiled vacantly upon the 
judge and jury, and began whistling as de- 
scribed by the crockery -dealer. The little old 
man clasped his hands firmly together, and 
breathed an earnest thanksgiving from the 
dusky corner where he stood alone. In a few 
minutes it got abroad that the prisoner was 
convicted — a shout shook the air without, 
and, presently, a crowd rushed in that filled 
the hall afresh. The prisoner was to be ta- 
ken out by the private way, but the little old 
man was not to be cheated this time. He had 
urged himself through the press, and stood 
against the lintel of the door through which 
he must pass. In a few minutes he came 
along. When Fyler saw who it was that 
watched his steps, he glared upon him. Hob- 
bleshank gazed after him, as he passed away 
to his doom, with a look of unre vengeful tri- 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 
mb. close's 1481 nox. 

Ix the Tombs' prison, where he lay under 
sentence of death, Fyler Close maintained, as 
far as the limits of his cell allowed, the same 
sports and humors he had practised in the open 
air. The turnkey, who had charge of this 
range of cells, whenever he looked in or 
brought his food, never failed to come upon 
him in the very ecstacy of a new device or 
gambol. This was in the day, when Fyler 
would place himself in the middle of the floor, 
and sit, huddling his limbs together, gathering 
the sun that streamed in at the window of the 
cell at certain hours, in his outspread hands 
like so much fire. But with the night he crept 
into a corner, and stood shivering and driving 
off with the self-same hands, shapes that 
swarmed thicker than the sun-beams by day. 
He cursed the darkness ; it was no friend of 
his. The very first night he had lain there 
after the trial, he got into the corner furthest 
from the door, and while he crouched there, the 
jurors glided across the floor, one by one, and 
whispered in his ears, " Guilty," then after 
them the judge, with the same word in his 
mouth, then the haberdasher, the poor black- 
smith, Hobbleshank, and whoever else he had 
dealt with, and muttering the word so that it 
hissed in his ear, passed away. 

One night the two lamps that light the 
prison-yard at the rear, and lend a ray or two 
to the condemned cells, went out ; and Fyler, 
vexed beyond measure, dashed his hands 
against the door, and shouted for light — light ! 
They left him alone, supposing it was some 
new freak, until he fell down in his agony, and 
was found in the morning pale and trembling, 
his eyes starting from his head, and his hair 
bristling up. The keepers wondered what he 
had seen to stamp such a horror in his look. 
With the day he recovered his strength, and 
tried his gambols afresh. It was the second 
morning after this that the turnkey entered his 
cell and placed his food before him, standing 
aside while he despatched it if he chose. 
This officer was square and heavy in his frame; 
but with one of his lower limbs so far beyond 
the other in length that he had the appearance, 
as he came along the gallery, swinsing his 
long arms and stretching it out before him, of 
working a great wheel the revolutions of which 
drove him on. He stood against the door, his 
long limb planted before him like a table, and 
on this he rested his elbow, and regarded Fyler, 
who made it a part of his scheme to devour 
such food as was set before him with the raven- 
ing eagerness of a wolf. 

appose you're aware the hanging comes 
off next Friday ?" saii the turnkey, by way of 
sharpening his appetite. 

"That's a capital idea!" answered Fyler 
Close, looking up from his meal, " I hope I'll 



MB 



PUFFER HOPKTVS. 



fitters and fresh biscuit for breakfast ' ani turned him about so that he faced a blan- 

that morning : whose to be hunsv — ket pinned against the wall. Having provided 

fern are the qaeerest ehap !" pnrsned the him with this eligible point of view, he palled 

turnkey, slapping his long leg with his knuckles, down the blanket and disclosed a great number 

-.;-. next Friday's your day — you own it of rude figures, sketched upon the stone in 

and ean do just what you please with it till chalk. 

twelve o'clock. It's only a half apple, after •'•' What's all this ?" asked the keeper, again. 

alL Xext Friday's got no afternoon to you, "You know he's a angel of fire, sir, as was 

old eh between ourselves, ain't you shown at the Oyer," answered the turnkey; 
afeard to die V I «* and these is his victims ."' 

This interrogatory moved Mr. Close's mirth- On a closer inspection one of them was 

ful feelings greatly; he rose from his bench, found to resemble not a little the long judge; 

tossed his knife and fork high in the air, and there was another, a little shambling figure 

inarching to the basket that had brought hi3 with one eye out, and another, heavy-browed, 

food, and which was at the turnkey's side, he and solid of port as he could be made to ap- 

cast in the great blue plate from which he had pear in rude chalk. This the turnkey thought 

eaten, as if it had been a huge coin, and said : was a juror who had pressed matters against 

ir, there's two hundred and fifty Fyler at the trial. They were all scarcely 

thousand dollars for the bread and steak.' 5 He more than scrambling lines upon the wall ; 
broke into a danee which extended through the , about them was a great pother of shrubby 

cell, and occasionally included his bed, upc A scratches — this was the fire, 

which he mounted, by way of interlude. " Well, sir," said the keeper to Fyler, when 

The turnkey was answered; he gathered the he had studied the lines a while ; " what are 

basket under his arm, turned for a look at Fy- you going to do with these gentlemen — with 

ler, shaking his head, and locking the door, set this one for instance ?" pointing to the long 

his wheel in motion and moved away. jud?e. 

A week only. Fyler be?an, in hi5 mind, to '-He's 



see the gallows-tree rising in the yard. Instead 
of sleeping now, as he had done all alon?, 
with some comfort, he spent the better part of 
the night, standing upon his bed, which he had 



for a couple of hundred years, 
only," answered Fyler ; " but it's a slow fire, 
and itll roast him tender before his time's 
out." 

" You don't give a juryman as much as a 



drawn there, stretching himself up his whole judge?" asked the keeper, 
length, and gazing through the narrow window ( Fyler feigned to be all abroad for an answer 
of his eell, to catch a sight of men moving in till the question was renewed by the turnkey, 
the yard below, or the stars, or the line of when it appeared that he had allotted to the 
dusky light that rose beyond the prison-wall, juror for special reasons, a fire that was to last 
where men were free and walked the streets three hundred and twenty-five years and a day. 
unchained. A week only. The chance of a But the fire seemed by all odds to rage hot- 
commission to inquire into his madness, with a test in the neighborhood of the little figure 
hope of which he had toiled so hard and long with the single eye ; be seemed to have never 
in his freaks, seemed fading fast and leaving tired of piling on the fuel, and as far as chalk 
him manacled more than ever. One trial more could represent, it was all a live coal. At first 
and he would fix his mind. The next day Fyler said that was to burn a week, then 
when the turnkey came in he took him apart, he added a year, then a hundred years, and so 
as though there had been a great crowd listen- ' kept on extending his term, till the keeper, out 
ing to catch every word that dropped, and in a of all patience, broke away, 
mysterious whisper made known that he had '•' A clear lunacy case as ever was !" said 
great news for the keeper, and begged him to the turnkey, appealing to the keeper with def- 
be brought at once. The turnkey turned about ere 

and stared at Fyler, bat not knowing what " Hold your tongue !" rejoined the keeper ; 
t be in his wish, went away and -'there will be no more lunacy cases. The 
*ly came back announcing that the keep- < groveinor was gammoned in the last 
er was at hand. This was no sooner made , Wearing spectacles without glasses and eating 
known than Fyler, standing out upon the floor sticks for beef-steaks wont go any kn 
and fixin? his hand, bent up after the fashion Lock the door and come alon 
of a horn, began blowing furious blasts. The Fyler pondered on what fell from the keep- 
keeper was a stout personage with an inquiry er. Another rivet held his p — how 
A dark brows ; he stood in the should that and all others be drawn at m 
i ling it to a hair, and looking doubtfully That same afternoon he read in his cell, by 
at Fyler. asked what this meant ? " close stealth, although no soul was present, a 
" That's what he calls his final trump," an- paper which had got there, Heaven knows 
swered the turnkey ; « he was blowing trum- how. Late the night before a mysterious 
11 last night." figure, more like a goblin with interminable 
had blown not less than for i any thin? else 'it might have been 
peals, Fyler came down his cell, and taking t . ,, bad stalked in the street at the 
keeper by the collar, led him into the middle I back of the prison ; some said afterward it had 



PUFFER HOPKTXS. 



climbed the wall. As the paper fell through , prisoner not open to his counsels. Fyler con- 
his window, dropped from above, this might be fessed he didn't like his views of predestinationi 
so. Whatever it was, and whoever might be at all, and called for another parson. The 
its sender, it quickened his thoughts not a next was large and stout; and Fyler dis- 
little. It was clearly expedient for him to get covered an irreconcilable difference in their 
back into his wits at once. Accordingly when notions of total depravity. Then there cane 
the turnkey brought his supper that night, he another, a short square man, who broach- 
found Fyler quietly seated and looking about ed such doctrine on the subject of infant bap- 
him with the air of one just wakened from a tism that Fyler almost drove him from his cell. 
dream. \ What a delicate conscience this prisoner had, 

•'• Where am I ? who am I ?" said Fyler. and how hard to please ! He had but three 
■ How long have I been in this place ?" days more to live, and they would give him 

•• Why, old fellow, you're in the Tombs, ' such comfort as they could. At last there 
Centre-street." answered the turnkey, ■ where came along, alter so many trials, a snug little 
you've been these four weeks and better: and man, about J who wore a wig, and 

as to who you are. you're Fyler Close as you whose religious views harmonized so entirely 
was yestenfey, and the day afore, and the day with Fyler's that the broker took a fancy to 
alb re that. That's who you i him at once, and made him spend hours with 

u You must be wrong,' 5 rejoined Fyler, quite him in his cell. Fyler spared no pains to cul- 
calmly. « I have been asleep twenty-five tivate an intimacy, and was not backward in 
years or so. I think. What a dream I've hr. g his affectionate regard for the little 

h about me in swarms, dressed in hand- parson. One night, after a long and delightful 
some red dresses, and beautiful cherubs carry- interview, in which the little parson had incul- 
ing sticks with gilt tops ed a great number of excellent principles, 

u Oh. ho !" cried the turnkey, slapping his -i to him, •• Dil it ever occur to yoa 

long knee like one that makes a great dis- how much we resemble each other in look **' 
covery — •• I see how it is j them red angels The little parson confessed it had not. 
that was about you so thick was volunteer fir w I'll show tha: ; ler; 

men : and as for the cherubs they're nothing " let me take your wig a minute."' 
else but the indefatigables that you see in court He accordingly removed it from the parson's 
on your trial, with their staves. Oh, ho, that's ' head and placed it on his own. 
a very good one, Air. Prisoner. I see you're a "It would be so odd." said Fyler lau; 
coming : any one should come in now — I guesi 

v i I think, too." continued Fyler, placidly, fasten the doc 
"And now that I hav la this sinful He drew a string, which was somehow o 

"ike a slice or two ot the V er hanging there, and the door was hel 

life, just to cheer me up and keep me from clos f 

fainti w let me have your coat, ^, said Fyler. 

S mething in the way of a parson, eh I" ; The little parson yielded it with some show of 
asked the turnkey, looking curiously at him. reluctance. Then he took his vest, his paata- 
Fyler gave him to an it was: "If loon, his shoes : then he put on his neck -stock 

that's it. you can have a whole ■ : and his plain black hat. 

a wonderful run if b" " Isn't the resemblance wonderful I" asked 

They come here to get moral texts for their Fyler. giving the parson, who I ring 

sermons : you'll be a capital one — and when by, a look that made him shake a little more. 
its known, won't there be a competition ! I Fyler then invited him to another quarter of 
guess not :" The turnkey laughed disdainfully the cell, where he insisted it would be to his 
at himself: and Fyler hoped he nv._ "e advantage to have a bandage put about his 

I text, and be a comfort to some poor arms and waist, to keep him from catching 



creatures in that way. The turnkey took his 
basket and keys and went away ; but pr 
returned and, putting his head in at the door. 
Ml he'd begin with f'* 



The little parson might hare 
trilling objection, but he saw that in F 
look which silenced him. 

It must be death to one of your tender 



may send me a presbyterian gentle- constitution." ■ - u should get 

man, if you plea- .er. 

•• 1 -Vail have one fresh and first-rate," 
answered the tui ■ 

orach cheerfuller. 
Qaod nisrht '" He locked the cell and propel- 
led himself at an increased speed along the 

gallery, making known to the other keepers, opening it at the book of Job, aad 
as he passed, that the old prisoner was in his patience to him. *s the best virtue nader pres- 
wits again. ent circumstances, he left him — shivering and 

The presbyterian came. Fyler eyed him bald-headed— upon the floor, aad stepped light- 
sharply: he was tall and nar :th. 

interview he left, finding - moot hi y along in his parson's dress, 



into the gallery in your present state." He 
him to a ring in the door, aad fastened aa end 
of the cord to the wal >o that the 

•otion on the part oi the parson would 
Mood the cell. He then placed in his hands 
the pocket-bible he brought in with aim, and 



284 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



and catching as much of the parson's gait as 
he could, he reached the prison-yard. When 
his feet struck the ground he felt free — but 
looking up, with the high prison-walls about 
him, he breathed hard again, like one at the 
bottom of a well. The sky was strangely over- 
cast, and a chill crept through his frame. The 
officers of the lower door were away, and he 
was obliged to pass through the Sessions court- 
*" oom. He stole up the steps, and looked 
through the glass door leading from the prison- 
yard into the court. A trial was going for- 
ward, and the court-room was thick with 
people. He looked on for a moment with a 
curious eye, remembering his own ; and then 
shrunk back, shuddering at the prospect of 
passing through. With a keen sense in him- 
self of what his parson's dress concealed, he 
feared they might seize him and hurl him back 
to the cell he had left. He opened the door — 
the officers glanced at his black coat, and 
tapped the nearest of the crowd to give him 
way. With a respect for the errand of charity 
on which they supposed he had been bound, 
they fell back, leaving a wide space through 
which he must pass to the outer door. He 
would rather they had stood close packed, and 
treated him in that regard like the meanest of 
themselves. At length, with a heart fifty 
times at his throat, he was upon the outer 
stairs ; creeping stealthily down from column 
to column, he reached the street. He started 
forward at a swift pace, but becoming presently 
confused, he halted and looked about. There 
was a trouble in the sky — a darkness, not of 
tempest or customary clouds ; an eclipse was 
brooding above him. A cold shadow filled the 
air, and Fyler was bewildered and alarmed. 
At first he went to the right, and coming upon 
an object that told him he was wrong, he re- 
turned upon his track and went as far astray 
on the other hand. He had lost his way, and 
seemed to have forgotten, all at once, the bear- 
ings of the streets. While he wandered in 
this uncertain mood, the cold drops starting to 
his brow, there came upon the wind a loud 
clamor of drums and trumpets and marching 
feet. Torches flashed upon the darkness — as 
a long procession turned a corner — and Fyler, 
aided by their light, crept along a coal-yard 
wall. 

In a minute more he was at an opening of 
the great sewer, which was undergoing repair ; 
falling flat upon his face that no eye might 
watch him, he crept down its mouth, holding 
on to the broken stones and fastenings of iron 
with his hands, till he reached the bottom. 
He heard the tread of feet above him — a gleam 
of light — and all was silence and darkness. 
How far within he ever groped his way was 
never known, nor what scheme he had in view, 
unless it might have been — wild and bold 
enough — to escape in this way to the river, 
where Ishmael Small, it was said, had been seen 
for many hours hovering in a boat about that 
mouth of the sewer. 



Nor was Ishmael himself, who had the morn- 
ing after the arrest borne away an old trunk 
or two from the den in Pell street, seen after 
that night. The last act that could tell where 
the broker stopped, was, that passers-by had 
heard at a certain place, as they crossed the 
street, a sharp and dreadful cry for help, riving 
the very earth beneath their feet. The bro- 
ker's body, perishing thus amid all the foul- 
ness and infamy of the city's drain, was never 
found. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE NIGHT PROCESSION. 

The unparalleled outrage of clearing the up- 
per Wabash, being sufficiently insisted upon, 
answered the purpose as well as any device 
they could have contrived. The triumph of 
Puffer was complete. He had carried his elec- 
tion by a handsome majority — bowling down 
Mr. John Blinker, majestically as he carried 
himself, as easily as a ninepin with a rolling 
bottom — Hobbleshank's strong recruits (of 
which Puffer had just now heard) coming in to 
give the decisive blow. The popular mind, still 
heaving and surging, searched for a channel 
through which to vent the enthusiasm (in such 
cases there's always a little over) which had 
not been exhausted in the contest itself. The 
Bottomites resolved to make a public demon- 
stration of their victory — one to allure new 
friends and terrify old enemies — and a street- 
parade, a grand procession by torchlight, was 
fixed upon as most imposing. The newspapers 
began immediately to trumpet the show ; the 
wire-pullers and busybodies in every direction 
were on the alert, dusting their banners and 
waking up their retainers. In a week from 
the election the preparations were concluded, 
and at sundown of the day appointed, the forces 
of the procession began to assemble in the 
Houston street square, East river. Two men 
were seen with highly flushed faces, the dawn of 
the procession, to roll off a couple of barrels 
around a corner from a neighboring pump, and 
hoist them upon a truck behind a canvass ban- 
ner, which denoted that these were two gen- 
uine and unadulterated barrels of the water of 
the upper Wabash, in its aboriginal condition 
before the clearing under the new bill. A 
few minutes after, two other flush-faced gen- 
tlemen came around another neighboring cor- 
ner with a couple of rolling barrels, which 
were duly planted on a second truck, and which 
were, in like manner, given out as so much 
pure fluid drawn from the mighty Hudson by 
an aged sailor, who would ride in one of the 
barouches. Presently, a body of horsemen, 
with new beaver hats and blue ribands at their 
buttonholes, came scampering distractedly in- 
to the square, and rode about issuing enthusi- 
astic orders, and inspecting with military ac- 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



tivity the condition of the square, from one 
end to the other. These were the marshals 
of the procession ; and in less than a couple of 
minutes they were followed by numerous de- 
tachments of one kind and another, dropping 
in at different points. In an hour the square 
was full of horsemen, pedestrians, barouches, 
carts, banners — and, for a time, there was an 
unbroken hubbub of shouting voices, and an 
inextricable confusion and entanglement of all 
classes and orders of society. 

By dint of driving up and down at the top of 
their speed — riding every now and then over 
a child or an old woman, assailing a detach- 
ment of clamoring clerks in a high voice of 
command, or imploring, with bended knees in 
their saddles, a squad of mounted cartmen — 
they succeeded in forming the line. A gentle- 
man in a dirty round jacket, filled his trumpet 
till it overflowed ; a short-legged drummer 
dashed his sticks against the parchment ; the 
crowd gave three cheers, as they do when a 
ship breaks from her stays, and the great Bot- 
tomite procession was launched upon the streets. 
There was a barouche, containing a standard- 
bearer, with two committee-men to fill up, that 
led the van ; then a barouche bearing two an- 
cient residents on the Wabash (brought on ex- 
pressly for this occasion), extremely pale and 
sickly — as might have been expected — and 
obliged to be fed out of a bottle, by a boy in 
the carriage with them, to keep the breath in 
their body. This device the crowd approved 
of, and gave three cheers more as they trotted 
in the wake of the procession. Then there 
was a barouche with two fishermen — great, 
sturdy, grampus-like fellows — educated, of 
course, on the banks of the Hudson, and chew- 
ing pigtail in evidence of the holiness and ma- 
jesty of the anti-Wabash cause. 

But when, behind these, the crowd caught 
sight of another barouche — wrapped round and 
round with banners — the very horses trotting 
forward in trowsers made of striped bunting, 
there was no limit to the popular enthusiasm. 
In this, the Hero of Kipp's bay — the redoubta- 
ble Champion of New York — the illustrious 
Hopkins himself, stood up, and removing his 
hat, waved it pleasantly to the crowd, at full 
arm's-length, as though he was bailing up their 
cheers, and pouring them out of the hat into 
the barouche. High above his head danced the 
banner wrought by the dark-eyed young lady — 
the blank filled as she had wished — " Uncom- 
promising hostility to the clearing of the Wa- 
bash.— For Congress, Puffer Hopkins, the He- 
ro of New York !" 

In the carriage with Puffer rode Mr. Halsey 
Fishblatt, who had assumed a clean ruffle, of ex- 
traordinary dimensions, and whose very waist- 
coat seemed swelling and ready to burst with a 
speech, with which he was no doubt prepared 
to explode the moment he should be touched. 
Then there were the fire companies — the ear- 
nest and ardent friends of the successful can- 
didate— 'all in their red shirts and leather caps, 



dragging their engines by the rope, and joining 
in the cheerings of the crowds with lusty voice. 
A throng of sailors, surging and swaying along, 
twelve abreast and arm-in-arm, in duck trow- 
sers, blue shirts, and hats of tarpaulin ; and 
then, in an uninterrupted line, in seventeen 
carriages, the seventeen wards of the city, rep- 
resented by as many emblematical gentlemen; 
the first second and third being solid, substan- 
tial old fellows, with well-fed persons, and a 
cross of the Dutchman in their look ; the sixth, 
a strapping, raw-boned genius, with a cane in 
his hand quite large enough for a club or shil- 
lelah ; the seventh, a plain citizen, evidently, 
by his dress and aspect, rising rapidly in the 
world ; the fifteenth, a dainty gentleman, with 
a well-plaited ruffled shirt, and copious rings 
upon his fingers ; and so throughout the seven- 
teen. In strong contrast came a shoal of Wo- 
begon e, unhappy-looking gentlemen, who called 
themselves, in a portentous banner which they 
bore above their heads, the " Proscribed watch- 
men" (they complained that the public offices, 
to which they had acquired a legal right, by 
ten years' uninterrupted possession, had been 
taken from them), and they wore their caps 
hind-foremost to denote the depth and agony 
of their bereavement. With these — a fellow- 
sufferer in a common cause, there rode, in a 
single gig, a lady of a venerable aspect, who 
had for fifteen years dispensed at one of the 
public watchhouses, pigs'-feet and coffee to the 
watchmen, as they came in from their rounds. 
She was the mother of five children — her hus- 
band, now dead, had lost an arm in an election 
riot — and she, a widow, had been ruthlessly 
thrust from the watchhouse. All this was ex- 
pressed in the banner which her eldest boy car- 
ried above her, on which were painted the god- 
dess of liberty, with a crape around her liberty- 
cap (to denote the lady's widowhood) ; a one- 
armed ghost, appearing from a neighboring 
tomb (her late husband) ; and a table spread 
in a corner of the standard, at which five small 
skeletons were represented as feeding on pea- 
soup out of a large blue bowl. 

This division of the show was received by 
the crowd with an outbreak (as it was described 
in the newspapers) an outbreak of irrepressible 
indignation. Public opinion is always out- 
raged in such cases, and follows the perpetra- 
tors, they said, as surely as the shadow the 
sun; and here came public opinion itself. 
Through all the length and breadth of the 
United States there is, at all times, supposed to 
be rolling a great sphere or ball — pausing some- 
times at villages which it takes in its way, then 
at cities or hamlets — but ever rolling on, on, 
along the seaboard, up mountain-sides —bound- 
ing and rushing through valleys — growing stead- 
ily larger, larger, and keeping up a horrible 
rumbling and tumult wherever it moves. The 
knocking to and fro of this mighty hall is a fa- 
vorite sport of COngreSB-raen, editors, and oth- 
ers, who find a great diversion, in their seden- 
tary and arduous labors, in racketing it about. 



286 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



It was this mighty ball that was set in mo- 
tion in behalf of the lady in the single gig ; 
and typifying this — public opinion, which rolls 
and gathers like an avalanche — a great can- 
vas wheel was now pressed forward at the rear 
of the single gig, by an axle, at either end of 
which toiled a dozen or two sallow gentlemen 
with rickety legs, who, in the present case, 
stood for Congress and the public press. Di- 
rectly behind public opinion, and taking such 
advantage of its motions as he could, in a spe- 
cial hackney-coach, to preserve his invaluable 
health from the assaults of the night-air, came 
Colonel Clingstone, a venerable revolutionary 
veteran, whose patriotic ardor had been incon- 
testably established by his eating an entire Brit- 
ish ox (the property of a cowboy) during the 
first week of the war, which proved to be so 
substantial diet that he was able to live on the 
very name or shadow of it ever after — seasoned 
with a rumor of some gunshot wound or other. 
In the rear of the venerable colonel — who did 
not fail from time to time to show his frosty 
head at one window or the other, just to see 
how public opinion got along — there swarmed 
a lean, cadaverous, deadly-looking troop, in 
soiled garments and battered hats, and headed 
by our electioneering agent, Mr. Nicholas 
Finch, with a banner representing a group of 
citizens greatly cast down and with pocket- 
handkerchiefs at their eyes, weeping profusely 
at the tomb of Washington. It was observed 
of these gentlemen, who had chalked their faces 
to an interesting paleness to create public sym- 
pathy, that whenever the revolutionary veteran 
thrust his portly person into view, one or other 
of them would mutter between his teeth, " CuV 
that old chap ! he's had fat pickings forty years 
from a pin-prick I" The sympathies of the crowd 
were evidently with the cadaverous followers 
of Mr. Finch. 

" I know them fellers," said a squint-eyed 
bar-tender, who was on the look-out ; " them's 
Finch's hunters ; they're wonderfully ill-used 
gem'men — they wants berths in the custom- 
house, for the sake of their country, and their 
country wont let 'em take the berths ! Ain't that 
a hard case, Joe ?" 

" Crueller nor the anaconder !" answered 
Joe, a dependant of a neighboring bakery; 
" I say let every man bake his bread in the 
gov'ment oven, if he likes to. Don't we own 
the gov'ment — and what's gov'ments good 
for if they can't do a man's private washing, 
and ironing, and bread-baking? That's my 
views ?" 

The lean gentlemen, in a word, were office- 
seekers, ambitious to serve the public on any 
terms ; belonged to either side, or both sides, 
as occasion required. It was a great wrong 
to keep them out of place, for if they expended 
half the ardor in serving the public which they 
did to serve themselves, public affairs must have 
been managed with extraordinary prudence and 
despatch. Poor fellows ! they were in a sad 
plight ; no bread nor beef at home, and their 



ungrateful country refusing to cash their bills. 
It was as much as Mr. Finch could do, moving 
about and whispering cheerful promises in their 
ears, to keep them in spirits to go through their 
parts in the procession. 

Behind these, comfortably quartered in a se- 
ries of light wagons, followed a body of gentle- 
men in high glee, rosy-gilled, laughing and 
making merry of every object on the road. 
They seemed entirely at their ease, and to have 
nothing to do in this world but to carry certain 
torches which they waved and flaunted about 
their heads as in pastime, and merely to show 
the world how comfortable they were. It is 
hardly necessary to add, that the gentlemen in 
the light wagons were office-holders ; and that 
in evidence of their grateful remembrance of 
the man who founded such a government, they 
carried a full length of the Father of his coun- 
try. On a closer inspection, certain members 
of the Bottom Club might have been discovered 
settled in the light wagons ; they had doubtless 
left off ameliorating the condition of society in 
order to devote their undivided attention to 
their own comfort and the public service, on 
which their outcry had quartered them. Be- 
hind these, singling himself out from the com- 
mon herd, a little man marched about a plat- 
form, which he had caused to be built at his 
own private expense, and borne up on the 
shoulders of four sturdy partisans, blowing a 
small brass trumpet, of great depth of wind, 
from time to time, and waving a small white 
flag with great earnestness about his his head. 
This gentlemen, too, was ambitious of office, 
and by no means inclined to have the magnifi- 
cence of his claims confounded with the de- 
merits of the gentry who plodded on foot. 

And then came scampering forward, Mr. 
Sammis at the head of a hundred and fifty 
mounted cartmen ; and as they rode in their 
frocks, tottering and tumbling in their saddles, 
they resembled not a little a hundred and fifty 
clowns in an equestrian pantomime, slightly be- 
side themselves with strong drink. 

There was a part of the line obscured by a 
cloud of hangers-on, from which a report of 
lusty voices constantly broke in cries of " Here's 
the extra infantry !" " Terrible murder, sir, 
don't tread on my toes !" " Only three cents, 
and full of pipin'-hot soocides and seductions !" 
When, in turning a corner, the cloud broke, 
it disclosed, in their usual undress uniforms of 
baggy caps, half coats, and inadequate breech- 
es, a detachment of newsboys, bearing aloft, 
with an air of haughty defiance, numerous pa- 
per ensigns, on which were inscribed " Free- 
dom of speech and plenty o 1 pies !" " Long- 
nines and liberty !" and other decisive axioms 
of the newsboy creed. 

At the heels of the news-boys, there fell in 
great swarms of citizens, in long coats, short 
coats, hats, caps, badges, and locked arms ; and, 
when every joint was set, it began, at first slow- 
ly, but afterward with increased motions, to creep 
like a three-mile snake, along the streets. As 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



287 



far as the eye could reach either way, there 
was a tumultuous flow of faces — lighted up 
by torches, borne on high shadowed by banners 
and emblems, seeming to fill the city, and hold 
possession of the night at every point. 

The drum beat, the trumpet sounded, the 
marshals in an ecstacy of excitement, hurried 
up and down the line — there was one in buck- 
skin breeches and military top-boots, who did 
immense execution in clearing the line of the 
kerbstone by riding over loafers and women 
who stood in the gutters — the procession moved 
on. With flaring torches they filed through 
the streets, turned the distant corners — and 
swept in in their course whole armies of recruits. 
About the chief divisions of the line the popu- 
lace clustered in swarms, and the rear-ward 
was swelled with a great crowd of laggards, 
who in tattered garments, many of them shoe- 
less and hatless, shambled after. Wherever 
they passed there were innumerable faces at 
the windows, peering out ; and the sidewalks 
were thick with gazers. Like a turbid stream 
it rolled on, street after street, staying itself 
only for an instant, at different houses, to heave 
a great cheer in compliment to some friend of 
the party who dwelt within, or a portentous 
groan in condemnation of an enemy. When 
they arrived at a narrow street that crossed 
their way, they came to a dead halt. A stump- 
ing noise, in the deadly silence, was heard upon 
the steps of an oyster-vault — a jolly face pre- 
sented itself — the crowd burst into a cheer of 
recognition — Mr. Jarve Barrell laid his hand 
upon his breast, waved his hat — and the crowd 
passed on. 

At length, in an overwhelming flood of a 
thousand tributaries, they poured down upon the 
great square in front of Fogfire hall. At a 
given signal, and as one man, the vast gather- 
ing bellowed forth cheer after cheer — the very 
air rocked. The torches were gathered in a 
ring, shedding a gloomy lisht upon the Park, 
and on the tall gaunt buildings hard-by ; a 
gallows-tree was brought from a neighboring 
deposite. As soon as it was planted in the 
centre of the square, the red-shirted firemen 
swarmed in from every direction at its foot — a 
chain dropped from its summit — a blazing fire 
kindled beneath, and a hoarse voice shouted 
through a trumpet, "bring him forth!" The 
crowd shuddered involuntarily — but when they 
saw what it was that hung dangling from the 
chain, they burst into a huge laugh. All the 
uplands and winding ways of the city, where- 
ever the eye could reach, were set thick with 
faces, fixed upon the gallows with its iron 
fingers ready to pounce upon the victim. It 
was a portly little figure with a white head 
and green coat — a pair of supercilious eyes, 
they couldn't see), altogether not more 
than eighteen inches high. Such as weie near 
enough said it was the great insurance presi- 
dent — Mr. Blinker, the late opposition candi- 
date, reduced half a dozen sizes or so, and it 
was given out that he was brought to his ! 



prsent ignominy by the firemen, who may be 
supposed to have harbored a special ill-will 
against one who, by his constant presence at 
burnings and conflagrations, caused their sport 
to be stayed half way. However this was, he 
had been brought thither in an engine cham- 
ber, and was now swinging above the flames 
which crackled up and lovingly licked his feet, 
while the engine men stood grinning about. 
For a long time he hung, swaying to and 
fro, toying as it were with the fire, to the in- 
finite delight of the crowd, who gathered in 
masses upon the wagons, barouches, trucks, 
even upon each other's shoulders, watching the 
progress of the immolation. At length fire 
took upon his person. "It's caught his right 
boot !" cried one. There was an uproarious 
shout. "It's caught his left!" There was 
another still louder. But when the flame be- 
gan to invade the vital parts, there were no 
limits to their satisfaction, which they express- 
ed by ironical calls to the firemen to put him 
out. 

" Why don't you play upon his second story 
and upper-works, you fellers ! Give him a jet 
in th' abdomen ! Why will you let the cruel 
flame take the venerable man by the nose in 
that way !" It was to no purpose ; and though, 
as the blaze twinkled in his eyes — looking 
mischievously into their very sockets — he 
seemed to frown scornfully upon them, in the 
course of half an hour, during which the 
volunteers had given the fire many an ugly 
stir, the great insurance president, with all his 
dignity of person and majesty of look, was a 
cinder, picked up by a quidnunc, and in less 
than an hour deposited in the neighboring 
museum, among the bears and alligators, and 
potted beetles there preserved. Some say that 
this was Crump, the secretary of the Phoenix 
company, who had made himself active in feed- 
ing the flame by which the president had been 
burned. 

This business over — Mr. Blinker done to a 
turn — to the entire satisfaction of everybody 
present, there was a loud call upon Puffer 
Hopkins for a speech ; which call his associate, 
Mr. Halsey Fishblatt, was quite anxious to 
respond to. 

" Let me answer it !" said Mr. Fishblatt ; 
" I'll tell them a thing or two about the old vil- 
lain we've just burnt. I know him from his cra- 
dle. They expect something about him." And 
while Puffer kept his seat, Mr. Fishblatt 
mounted to his legs in answer to the summons. 
A broad, universal sibilation or hissing, ad- 
monished Mr. Fishblatt that his orations were 
not, just then, in request, and he dropped back 
into his seat like one stricken with 1 ball. 

There was the broad sky above them — the 
surging sea of heads — the goddess vl' j« 
in snow-white wood, at his back — the stream- 
ing banner and refulgent transparency of Fog- 
fire ball in front, and, by no means least of all, 
the two pure barrels of Hudson, and two of 
reeking upper Wabash, under hi.- 



288 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



upon the trucks ; could Puffer fail out of all 
these to frame a triumphant speech ? He 
could not, and, as he concluded, three peals, 
four times renewed, rent the circuit, and made 
the very pennons rustle in the air. 

Re-forming as soon as they could recover 
from the bewilderment of the harangue, and in 
much less order than they had set out, the pro- 
cession returned up the city in the direction of 
the Tombs. Though the music still sounded, 
and the torches still flared against the sky, a 
sudden depression seemed to have fallen upon 
the crowd. Many of the standard bearers 
dropped their standards, and allowed them to 
trail in the dust; great numbers left their 
places in the ranks and skulked away. A 
change had come over the very heaven itself; 
the face of the sky was dark — not with accus- 
tomed clouds or shadows — the great shadow of 
the earth itself was spreading over the firma- 
ment; an eclipse was at hand. At this mo- 
ment, and while yet there was some show of 
triumph and rejoicing in the crowd, Puffer's 
attention was withdrawn to a dark figure, 
which, scudding away from the glare of the 
procession, coasted along the walls, turned 
a corner and disappeared, as though it had 
dived into the earth. The contrast of this 
single silent figure, and the great tumultuous 
crowd, was so marked, that Puffer's mind was 
strongly fixed upon it. 

The darkness deepened, and multitudes kept 
falling off; among others, Puffer descried Mr. 
Sammis, as he left his place and passed by, 
looking up and smiling as he passed. 

Then Mr. Fishblatt ordered a sudden halt, 
and without a word of explanation disappeared 
from his side. What could this mean ? Were 
all things coming to an end ? He was medita- 
ting upon the incident, when a small, spare 
figure — which he had noticed throughout the 
night hovering about the carriage, and keeping 
its face turned constantly toward his own, on 
whichever side he looked, but which, in the 
uncertain light he could not more closely dis- 
cern — leaped upon the wheel and twitched him 
by the sleeve. How like it was to a similar 
summons at the very outset of his career ! A 
voice was at his ear entreating him to leave 
the carriage. 

" You know you are mine, now !" said the 
voice. 

It sounded other than it ever had before. 

" To see your friends at the farm-house, I 
know," answered Puffer, bending toward the 
questioner ; " but why not come into the car- 
riage with me, and ride out together ?" 

" No, no, you could not get out of the line," 
answered the other quickly. " You will not 
deny me this wish ? Come quickly — it darkens 
apace." 

Puffer did not hesitate — the pageant was fast 
growing to an end — but seizing a favorable 
pause, escaped to the ground and followed the 
other cautiously through the crowd. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

HOBBLESHANK AND PUFFER HOPKINS VISIT 
THE FARM-HOUSE. 

In a few minutes they were beyond its skirts, 
and moving at a good pace toward the suburbs. 
Hobbleshank led the way at such eager speed, 
looking forward to his path and back to Puffer, 
constantly, that it was some time before the 
young steps that followed reached him, and 
when they did, Puffer found him so pale and 
shaken by fatigue, it seemed, he begged him to 
borrow his support. 

Hobbleshank accepted it at once, and, with 
a smile of hope and trust in his look as he 
turned to answer, leaned upon Puffer, and they 
pursued their way. The old man's guidance 
and the young man's strength bore them swift- 
ly on. When they looked back, from an emi- 
nence they had reached in travelling up the 
city, the procession, they saw by the flaring 
torchlight, was crumbling in pieces ; detach- 
ment after detachment falling off in flakes, and 
with drooping banners, melting in the neigh- 
boring streets. 

As the old man and his companion moved 
along/there crept out upon the air a thick dark- 
ness — the earth's shadow lay, every minute, 
closer and closer to the pale moon above. The 
houses seemed, in the ghastly light, like ghosts 
or spectres of their former selves ; the church- 
steeples, quenched in the dim atmosphere, 
were broken off at the top. 

The passengers they met as they advanced 
came toward them, wrapped in the strange 
darkness, like travellers from another world. 
The great heart of the city itself seemed to 
grow still and be subdued to a more quiet beat- 
ing under the heavy air that oppressed its 
church-towers and its thoroughfares. Hobble- 
shank and Puffer drew closer to each other's 
side at every step. 

" You had not forgotten that you were mine 
to-night ?" asked Hobbleshank. 

" Not at all ! — how could I ?" answered 
Puffer. " I am yours now and at all times." 

" You are ?" interrupted Hobbleshank, quick- 
ly ; " thank Heaven for that !" 

" To be sure I am," continued Puffer. " You 
have made me what I am (I know this in more 
ways than one), and I am your creature as 
much as the pitcher is the potter's to carry me 
where you will, and to put me to what uses you 
choose. I am not sorry that the farm-house, 
now your own again, is the first to visit." 

"Never mind that," returned the old man. 
" But now that you have grown to be a great 
man, no matter how, won't the world be ask- 
ing questions of your early life and history ? 
What can you tell them, eh ?" 

Although this was spoken in a cheerful tone, 
he drew a hard breath as it escaped him. 

" Not much," answered Puffer ; " I don't 
know that I would tell the world anything, let 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



289 



them ask as much as they choose ; hut to you, 
my good old friend, always true, I may say that 
I had no early life." 

" You don't mean," interrupted Hobble- 
shank, quickly, " that you ever suffered from 
want of food, or lodging, or warmth ? In God's 
name, you don't say that !" 

Purler was startled by the old man's eager- 
ness, and seeing with how anxious a look he 
hung upon him, he answered at once : 

" Oh, no — never that — I meant merely that 
my childhood had neither father's nor mother's 
care ; and can there be life without them ? But 
I ought not to repine — I had kindness and some 
friends. As I meant to tell you, my first seven 
years were passed with a boatman, who lived 
on the edge of the North river, near Blooming- 
dale ; where I came from at first, I dont know 
— although he used to tell me f was found by 
him in the woods when an infant." 

" In the woods ?" said Hobbleshank, cheer- 
fully, " Go on, go on, you couldn't have been 
found in a better place." 

" The boatman's wife or some one that was 
near to him died," continued Puffer, wonder- 
ing at the old man's enthusiasm. " His heart 
broke, his affairs went into decay, and I into 
the Banks street asylum, as an orphan. When 
I had been there some six or seven years, one 
day there came into the room where we were 
all seated, our faces just shining from the tow- 
el, a stout, white-headed, rosy gentleman, of a 
middle age ; and pitching his eye upon me, af- 
ter ranging up and down the bench, said, 
"This is the boy I spoke of?" The matron 
answered it was. 

"Very good," said the rosy gentleman. 
" His name is Puffer Hopkins ; and when he's 
of age let him draw this check." He handed 
a paper to the matron, and, smiling upon me 
once more, went away. 

" What does this mean ?" asked Hobble- 
shank, anxiously. " He was no relation of 
yours." 

" I don't believe he was," answered Puffer, 
laughing. " Although I learned on inquiry 
in the neighborhood, years after, when I had 
drawn the money he had left me, that he had 
been a bachelor who had married late in life, 
and been much mocked and joked at for hav- 
ing no children. He had given out that they 
might be mistaken, and, by frequent visits to 
the asylum and this goodness toward me, suc- 
ceeded in getting his gossips and aspersers off 
the scent. He was dead, and his wife too, 
when I inquired, and that was all I ever knew 
of him." 

" It was a joke, then ; a mere joke ?" said 
Hobbleshank. 

" I suppose it was," answered Puffer. This 
answer seemed to be a great comfort to the old 
man, for he breathed more freely, and they 
hurried on at a quicker pace. 

The mighty shadow of the eclipse deepened 
and grew heavier upon the earth. Foot- 
pussengers paused and stood still in the 



road. The trees in the fields looked like solid 
shadows ; the sound of wheels died away in 
every thoroughfare. All life and motion were 
arrested for the time ; everything was at a 
pause but Puffer and Hobbleshank ; they were 
moved by impulses, it would seem, not to be 
stayed or dampened even by a disastrous dark- 
ness, or the obscuration of the sky. The blue 
heavens, they knew, lay beyond the apparent 
shadow, and they pressed on. They came to 
a steep road, and as they climbed this, Hobble- 
shank clung closer than ever to Puffer. At its 
top was an old country house, from the win- 
dows of which cheerful lights gleamed upon 
the darkness. The moment they came in sight 
of this the old man trembled as with an ague, 
and fell upon Puffer's arm for support. 

They were almost at its threshold, when, 
Hobbleshank arresting Puffer, they paused, 
and the old man turned so as to look him full 
in the face. It was evident there was some- 
thing on the old man's mind he had reserved 
to this moment. 

" Was there nothing," he said at length, like 
one who lingers to gather resolution, " was 
there nothing the boatman gave you as evi- 
dence of the place you were found in ?" 

" To be sure there was !" How the old 
man's look was renewed to youth, by these 
few words, and shined in Puffers. " To be 
sure there was — I forgot to mention it, but not 
to wear it with me always in my breast, with 
a hope." His hand was in his breast, but Hob- 
bleshank stayed him, and told him " not yet — 
not yet — it will be time presently." He would 
not trust himself to look at it. 

Puffer knew something of the old man's 
mood, and followed him silently as he led the 
way. There had been cheerful voices from 
within the house, but when it was known that 
Hobbleshank and Puffer were at hand, a dead 
stillness fell upon the place ; it was as if the 
old house itself listened, in expectation of what 
was to be told. 

They were no sooner within the hall than 
Hobbleshank, pointing to a door at the left 
hand, said, " In there — go in quickly — God 
grant that all may be right !" 

While Hobbleshank walked the old hall, the 
dim figures on its walls, watching him, as he 
might regard them as so many good spirits, or 
evil spectres, Puffer found himself in a small 
room, an antechamber, with two persons, one 
a woman, stout, hale, and of middle age ; the 
other, a man, spare of person, and of a sorrow- 
ful and forlorn look. They both stood before 
him as he entered, with looks riveted upon 
the door with a steady gaze. The moment lie 
crossed its threshold, a swift change crossed 
their features — their whole expression was 
shifted, like a scene, from that of dreadful 
doubt to one of certainty and confirmation. 

"It's Paul — little blackberry Paul— although 
the berry's worn out in course of time," said 
the woman, speaking fijCSl and closely perusing 
Puller's features ; " do you know us /" 



290 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



Puffer's mind was sorely vexed and troubled; 
he knew them, and yet it seemed he knew them 
not, for he could call neither by name. 

" If I dared to hope it," he answered at 
length, scrutinizing his countenance, " I might 
say this is my early friend, who brought me 
to be a boy seven years old ; but I don't be- 
lieve it !" 

The man seized his hand quickly, and told 
him he must, for he was no other. 

" You don't recollect me, then ?" said the 
woman, somewhat cast down by the inequality 
of Puffer's memory; "you sartainly haven't 
forgot Hetty — Hetty Simmons, it was then, 
Hetty Lettuce now — your old nurse ? Ah, me ! 
I can't be changed so sadly since then !" 

After a while Puffer — she pressed him to it 
— admitted that he caught now and then a tone 
in her voice that he ought to know. 

" Now, to tell the truth," said Hetty, a little 
vexed, " I didn't know your face either ; but I 
knew your voice the minute I heard it at Belle- 
vue the other night ; it was me that fastened 
that bracelet on your arm the night you were 
stolen away." 

" What bracelet ?" said Puffer. " You don't 
mean the one I wear in my breast ?" 

" Sartain — the very one," answered Hetty ; 
" Let's see ; I guess it's a match." Hetty held 
in her hand a half bracelet ; in a minute more 
she had Puffer's ; — they were matches, as she 
had guessed ; the same auburn hair — the same 
golden clasp. She threw open the door. Hob- 
bleshank stood there like one in a swoon — 
white and trembling, his two hands hanging 
like dead branches at his side. 

" Come in," said Hetty ; " good heavens, 
it's all as we thought !" 

At this bidding Hobbleshank staggered across 
the door-sill, and casting himself upon Puffer's 
neck, muttered brokenly, " My son — my son !" 
The tears fell from his old lids like rain. Mrs. 
Lettuce, and the other, laying the broken 
bracelet upon a table by the side of the great 
breast-pin which was there already, took each 
other by the hand and silently withdrew, leav- 
ing father and son to know each other, after a 
lifetime's separation, in peace. With halting 
words, with tears and passionate embraces, 
Hobbleshank made known to Puffer the chan- 
ces of his past life, how his mother died — he 
did not tell him all, there were dreadful words 
he could not trust himself with — how he was 
lost — how in twenty years he had often thought 
his child found again, but was so often sore 
baffled and almost broken in hope. From the 
first he felt that Puffer was his child and no 
other ; he dared not claim him till the last 
rivet fastened him back, as it had to-night. 

For many hours they had lingered together, 
dwelling upon the past, so full of hope and 
fear and strange vicissitude, when Hobble- 
shank, starting up as though it had just come 
into his mind, said : — 

"What will they think of us? Come, 



Paul, we Lave friends hard by that must not be 
forgotten." 

He led him along the hall, and, with his 
hand in his own, they entered another room, 
larger than the first, where a company sat, in 
an attitude of expectation, looking toward the 
door, and watching it as it opened. They 
knew, without a word, what the story was. It 
was Hobbleshank and his long lost, new-found 
son. They looked upon him whom they had 
all known as Puffer — now that he was Paul, 
and the old man's child — with new eyes. How 
kind in Hobbleshank, to bring together such, 
and such only, as he knew Puffer (for so we 
love to call him still), would most desire to 
meet. There was Mr. Fishblatt, standing 
with his skirts spread, in the middle of the 
floor, ready to open upon the case at the first 
opportunity ; and at his side Mr. Sammy Sam- 
mis, whose face, from being a cobweb of smiles 
on ordinary occasions, was now a perfect net, 
in every line and thread of which there lay 
lurking a gleam of welcome. Then there was 
old aunt Gatty, who smiled too, but afar off, 
like one who has not quite so sure a hold of 
the occasion of her smiling as might be desired, 
and seated near Dorothy, who whispered in 
her ear, and did what she could to make her 
conscious of the change that had come over 
the fortunes of her old friend. Not far from 
these, something of a shadow in their midst, 
was Puffer's early friend, the forlorn stranger ; 
and Mrs. Hetty Lettuce, who had not alto- 
gether recovered her spirits from the shock of 
not being recognised by her boy and nursling. 
But who are next — to whom Puffer gave his 
earliest gaze — where his eye lingered so long ? 
No other than the little old aunt and the dark- 
eyed young lady. 

Puffer shook hands with them one and all ; 
as if he were starting the world anew, and 
wished to set out well. There was no lack of 
voices, one might be well assured. Mr. Fish- 
blatt, at the top of his, declaiming upon it as 
one of the most extraordinary, unparalleled, 
wonderful histories he had ever known. (Pie 
had heard but the half yet.) Mr. Sammy Sam- 
mis corroborating, and Hobbleshank running 
from one to the other, and demanding, in a 
highly-excited state of mind, opinions upon his 
boy. Then he would come back again, re- 
quiring to be informed whether he hadn't 
done well — whether all had not been managed 
with great discretion, and as it should have 
been. 

" Hold there a minute," cried Mr. Halsey 
Fishblatt at one of these questionings. " Are 
you sure of your title here ?" 

" Quite sure," answered Hobbleshank. 

" What, sir !" retorted Mr. Fishblatt, " won't 
the state come in as the successor to the bro- 
ker, who, as a prisoner, is a dead man in the 
law, and seize the farm-house ?" 

" Ah ! you haven't heard the story of the 
deed," answered Hobbleshank, quickly. " Who 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



291 



has kept that back from you ? You ought to 
know that." 

And he proceeded to give him a full and au- 
thentic account of the marvel by which it had 
been preserved, rescued, and transmitted to his 
hands by Fob and his pale country friend. 

" Come and sit by me," said aunt Gatty, in 
a voice so affected by age that every other 
word was at the ceiling and the next plumb- 
down upon the floor, " come here by your old 
aunt." Puffer placed a chair by her side ; she 
seized both his hands in hers, regarding him 
steadily for some minutes, and then said, still 
gazing, " How like his mother ! — very like — 
don't you see it, Dorothy ?" 

Dorothy, although she had never seen that 
lady, rather than cross her old companion in 
her whim, admitted it was marvellous. 

" That's her eye exactly — but her hair — was 
that black or flaxen — how was that, Dorothy, 
you remember ? How old are you, my child — 
ten — perhaps twelve — ah, I forget ages won- 
derfully," and she fell off into an idle ponder- 
ing. She evidently supposed the world had 
stood still for at least fifteen or twenty years. 
Dorothy shook her head to the company round, 
and soothed her aged friend as she could. She 
presently after brightened a little, and asked if 
this old man they saw was the Hobbleshank 
whom she was bound to watch and guard as a 
death-bed trust — by a promise at his mother's 
bed-side fifty years old at least. It was the 
same, Dorothy answered, and this was his son. 
Aunt Gatty smiled at the news, and fell into a 
new vacancy. 

There was a close and whispered interview 
on Puffer's part with the dark-eyed young 
lady, which, strain their ear as they might, 
was pitched in far too gentle a key to be guess- 
ed at by any round, unless it might have been 
the smart little aunt who sat by, brightening 
up as it advanced as though it afforded her in- 
finite satisfaction to see how close and whis- 
pered it was. 

" I buried my only daughter," said the sor- 
rowful boatman, when Puffer questioned him, 
" many months ago — you remember her — your 
little play-fellow — whose blue eyes you used to 
watch so closely ?" 

Puffer did — but years had changed the hue 
of his mind, and with that the color of the eye 
that fixed his fancy most. 

The sorrowful stranger sighed, and Puffer 
turning away with some kindly thought at his 
heart, fell into the hands of Mrs. Lettuce, who 
stood near by with a candle and motioned 
Puffer to follow her. She crossed the room and 
led him into a small chamber at its side. The 
chamber, unlike the other parts of the house 
he had seen, was unfurnished ; it held nothing 
more than a low, narrow bed, a tattered blan- 
ket, and a few broken bed cords, trailing upon 
the floor. It was cold and damp, and a chill 
struck through Puffer as his companion closed 
the door and shut them in, what seemed to 
Puffer, from the first moment, a hideous place. 



" It's strange you didn't recollect your old 
nurse," said Mrs. Lettuce, " but never mind 
that ; all your troubles and tribulations began 
in this room ; and I want to tell what your 
old father's heart failed him to speak of. This 
was Fyler Close's sleeping-room for more than 
a year ; all the while your poor mother was 
sick — what snake's eyes that old villain had ! 
— and when he stretched his neck toward that 
door, when your poor mother was a dying, and 
spread out his old ugly hands, as if he had 'em 
hold of her young throat squeezing the life out 
— but that isn't it. You'll ask what all this 
means ? The long and the short of it is this. 
Fyler Close and your father loved the same wo- 
man ; and there wasn't a brighter angel out of 
heaven than that girl; they both loved her, 
Paul, but your father married her ; and from 
that day to this, he has had the shadow of the 
devil, yes the devil himself in the form of that 
broker, at hi3 heels. Your father, Paul, was 
always quick, and free, and lavish with his 
money ; and that Fyler Close knew well. He 
made believe that he didn't care which married 
the girl, but he hated your father to the death ; 
and as he knew your father's weakness, he 
worked upon it ; he urged him to all sorts of 
extravagance ; to buy this, and buy that, and 
buy the other — till the tide begun to run back 
with him — and then Fyler comes in, and like 
a dear friend, lends him all he wants. He 
was always of a lending nature, more for 
spite than gain, I always thought ; and so he 
went on lending till your father wasn't worth 
a cent he could call his own. Then Fyler be- 
gan to call it in by degrees, so that your father 
didn't see what he was driving at; first he 
had to sell a picture, then an up-stairs carpet ; 
then Fyler came to board in this house, to keep 
an eye on things. He thought plainer living 
proper ; and the family was put upon a short 
allowance." 

" Thi3 is a devil, as you say," said Puffer, 
from his closed teeth, while the sweat started 
to his brow. " A devil with two hoofs !" 

" By-and-by your mother fell sick — it was 
the presence of the old broker and a change 
in her way of living; she grew worse day by 
day ; it was no seated sickness, the doctors 
said, nothing they could name ; she was per- 
ishing, I verily believe, of hunger, for every 
day the table was more spare than before ; the 
broker himself seemed to live on air, to keep it 
in countenance, and all that time — all the while 
that poor dear creature was famishing with the 
pangs of hunger at her heart, which made her 
cry out, though for his sake — your father's 
sake, and lest some direr calamity might be 
brought upon him, she said not a word. But 
such cries as she uttered, so sharp and awful, 
I never heard in my life ; and Fyler Close lay 
on that couch, that very couch, drinking them 
all in like music. The devils must have him, 
if any man ! Your mother was buried." 

" Starved to death !" gasped Puller. 

" Even so, I fear," answered Mrs. Lettuce, 



292 



PUFFER HOPKINS. 



" and her grave is just by the house-wall, where 
the broker could thrust forth his head from 
this chamber window, and gloat upon it any 
time he chose. Your father saw her in her 
grave, but more like one raving mad than a 
rational creature ; immediately after the fune- 
ral he disappeared, was gone — no one knows 
whither to this day, though it is said he lived 
during that time upon the roads and highways 
of the country, and sheltered himself in sheds 
and barns. The old broker lodged here a few 
nights, grew disquieted it is thought, and went 
into the city. Paul, Paul," said Hetty, break- 
ing into tears, " I never thought when you 
were a month's infant on my lap, that I should 
live to tell you a tale like this. You didn't re- 
member me, but I forgive you." 

Puffer stood gazing upon the bed with a 
blanched face, and glassy eye, and rigid in ev- 
ery limb. Hetty would not let him dwell up- 
on it longer, but, taking him by the arm, led 
him gently back. So pale and unearthly was 
his look and action when he came forth, they 
all gathered about and asked what sudden sick- 
ness shook him so ? 

" Nothing, nothing," he answered. Before 
they could put further question, Hobbleshank 
entreated them to pardon him for a while, and 
drew Puffer away. They went into the open 
air, and treading gently on the earth, as though 
a grave lay under every step, they stood beside 
a tomb built close under the wall. It heaved 
above the earth, and Hobbleshank, laying his 
hand upon its top, said to Puffer, "This is 
your mother's grave." The swelling vines, 
crested with pure white blossoms, broke like a 
green wave over its marbled top. 

As they recrossed the threshold the trouble 
passed away from heaven, and the pale, clear 
light lay on all the country round. 

Hobbleshank led Puffer again into the little 
chamber. 

" I have a favor to ask of my child," he said, 
" but one that he will not fail to grant — I am 
sure, am I ?" 

To be sure he was, let him ask anything he 
chose. 

" I want you," said Hobbleshank, " to fix 



this breastpin in your bosom and get married 
to-night." 

To-night ! Puffer hadn't thought of such a 
thing. Twenty-five years to come would be 
time enough. The young lady was in the other 
room — the parson at hand — how could it be 
avoided — he'd like to know from Puffer how it 
was to be avoided ? Puffer could suggest no 
practicable means of escape, and proceeded 
with the old man to the other room, to be mar- 
ried with as good a grace as he could. The 
little parson had come ; there was the bride, 
too, whose consent had scarcely been asked, 
in her snow-white dress, the smart old aunt 
smoothing the folds and rubbing her hands al- 
ternately. In half an hour a change had come 
over the aspect of Puffer's sky as great as the 
eclipse without — brightening, not darkening, 
all that lay beneath. Who can tell what gos- 
sip the old farm-house rung with that night — 
what plans, what jests were broached — what 
good cheer went abroad among them all ? How 
Halsey Fishblatt declaimed — how the little old 
aunt chattered — how Hobbleshank shambled 
up and down the room in a constant glow — 
how it was finally determined that Hetty Let- 
tuce and Dorothy and Aunt Gatty should come 
to live in the old farm-house (there was a 
chirping house full), with Hobbleshank and 
Paul and the new wife. How Mr. Halsey 
Fishblatt would strike out some grand scheme 
or other, by which they should hear and know 
all that the city did, or thought, or said ; how 
Mr. Sammy Sammis and the little old aunt 
would come out and visit them, twice a week 
at least, in a new one-horse to be immediately 
established ; and the poor stranger, too, Puf- 
fer's early friend — there was a pleasant berth 
to be thought of for him — a nice little office 
Mr. Sammy Sammis had pitched upon in 
his own mind already, and about which he 
would see seventeen influential gentlemen to- 
morrow. 

A blessing upon the old household and the 

young — having spun out a long sorrow as the 

staple of their life, they have come upon a clear 

white thread, which will brighten on in happi- 

, ness and mirth to the very grave's edge ! 



THE END OF PUFFER HOPKINS. 



MISCELLANIES. 




MISCELLANIES. 



TRUE AIMS OF LIFE: 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

ALUMNI OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 
In the University Chapel, July 16, 1839. 

Gentlemen, brethren or the Alumni : — 

The occasion which has called us together 
to-day constitutes a fortunate pause in our ca- 
reer. Near enough to the period when we left 
these halls, to mingle in the cares and conflicts 
of the world, and far enough onward in the ac- 
tive march of life, it justifies us in looking back 
thoughtfully to the past and in considering what 
the great future may have in store for us. 

Youth, at least, the first freshness and glory 
of youth, are gone from us for ever. The gate 
of that happy paradise, whose clouds were but 
the ornaments of its morning heaven, and whose 
sorrow only deepened joy, is closed to our steps. 
Threatening and inexorable aspects warn us 
from it, and we must henceforth seek, in a 
wide and troubled world, such substitutes of 
happiness as it may furnish. But the mind — 
the unconquerable and adventurous memory — 
breaks every fetter, and, hurrying back, leaps 
that old garden wall, and introduces us for 
a little hour to scenes, hopes, and pleasures, 
that we thought were gone never more to re- 
turn. Who would not give all that he is and 
all that he has to recover his youth, with its 
buoyant heart, its cheerful dreams, its sense 
of wonder, its full-bosomed and innocent de- 
lights ? 

But the future brightens in the distance, and 
toward it we are impelled by the progressive 
spirit that belongs to our race. What we have 
been is chronicled in the great calendar of God. 
What we are yet to be lies, in a considerable 
measure, in th'e palms of our own hands, and 
will be moulded to honor or to dishonor, as truth 
and wisdom, or madness and error, teach us by 
the way. What, then, are the true aims of 
life ? Many so far misapprehend the objects 
of existence, as to suppose they are fulfilling all 
the duty of life if they pursue some particular 



and chosen career with honest and honorable 
success. It is a low and cheap estimate of our 
nature that regards men as mere merchants, 
soldiers, and artisans. These are the accidents 
and contingencies of our common life. No man 
acquires dignity, in the eye of a sagacious and 
comprehensive philosophy, by filling any or all 
of these stations with the utmost worldly suc- 
cess. It is not as the followers of business, 
war, and commerce, that men are venerable 
and noble beings. It is the condition of his 
destiny that he should labor ; but it is to im- 
prove and exalt his intelligence, to broaden the 
foundations of his intellectual and spiritual na- 
ture, that he lives. It is the motion and im- 
pulses of a soul that compasses earth and time 
and transcends physical limits, that make him 
the image of the great Mover of the heavens. 
These considerations should teach him to rev- 
erence his nature ; to bow down to his higher 
and better qualities with respect ; and to culti- 
vate his mind and affections because their de- 
velopment and cultivation is the noblest task 
in which he can be engaged. By too many the 
intellect is regarded as a means, a mere auxili- 
ary and mercenary, enlisted in the achievement 
of secondary and common objects. 

Instead of regarding and reverencing the 
mind as essentially constituting the man, as 
something in itself and by itself, without refer- 
ence to its available uses in life, it is held by 
many as a lesser servant or menial, in the 
large household of human nature, and ranked 
only with the hand that hews, and the shoul- 
der that bears base burdens and drudges for the 
abject and physical wants of man. The mind, 
this human mind of ours, if rightly understood, 
is a nobler subject of contemplation than tem- 
ples and pyramids — has in itself more durable 
greatness and beauty than mountains and the 
most glorious carved monuments fashioned by 
the cunning of human skill. 

Objects and pursuits which we regard in 
themselves as final aims, intrinsically lull of 
worth and moment, are furnished merely as in- 
citements and means toward the development 
of our higher nature. Many results which we 
gaze on as prodigies of human ingenuity, we 
the mere outbreak and transitory expression o[' 
this divine fire smouldering within. 



296 



MISCELLANIES. 



To accomplish the true aims of life we must 
first know what our nature is and what it re- 
quires. 

Our nature, then, is not a simple element, 
like the air, the ocean, or the wind, having a sin- 
gle agency to perform, performing it always in 
one way and through an established round or 
channel of action. It is a compound and com- 
posite condition — a rude, misshapen, unformed 
chaos of moral, intellectual, and physical ingre- 
dients, placed in our keeping to be wrought, by 
a steady will and enlightened industry, into 
symmetry and beauty. To show the vast reach, 
the towering strength and altitude of our na- 
ture, and its capacity of extension, we know 
that it has been the laborious duty of a long life 
in some men, to single out some separate qual- 
ity and devote night and day to its mature and 
perfect development. Constantly heaping to- 
gether material from every corner of the visible 
universe, and piling thought on thought, until 
the broad earth seemed to be its base and the 
heavens were pierced by its rising summit, we 
have seen the majestic fabric of some great ge- 
nius ascend, and just as the structure was as- 
suming breadth and proportion, the earth has 
opened and swallowed the mighty architect 
with all his plans. Think you that sublime 
labor was lost ? No. He who here toiled at | 
the foundations in our midst will there be en- 
gaged in completing the glorious structure of 
his nature, and will work cheerfully at its ar- 
chitrave and crowning capital in the eye of his 
great Taskmaster. 

In the whole range of animated beings there 
is, I imagine, no creature in all respects like 
man ; none in the wide circuit of planets and 
universes, possessing the same powers, placed 
amid the same circumstances, and accomplish- 
ing the purposes of his being through the same 
hopes, fears, trials, joys ; under a similar sky, 
and impelled by spiritual and physical influ- 
ences of like potency and character. 

It is our duty to unfold this vast, complex, 
and peculiar nature, by availing ourselves of 
every aid within our reach ; and aids are not 
wanting. Not a star, a stream, a shadow — 
that does not co-operate with us in this great 
ministry. Every mute thing in nature has a 
voice to summon forth some faculty of ours and 
to cherish it in its growth. The grandeur of 
the heavens kindles our imagination, the stub- 
born mountain-ascent evokes the resolute will, 
the ocean-flood challenges our daring, and the 
decaying blossoms of earth persuade us to weep. 
I do not deny that many objects are of tempo- 
rary use and pass utterly away without any deep 
and durable impressions on our character ; but 
I do believe, that in his infinite wisdom and 
skill the great Builder has created this world 
of ours and all that is in it, for this high pur- 
pose ; has devised it as the best school for hu- 
man nature, and in his mature and eternal 
counsels has chosen it out of innumerable plans, 
as the best suited for the composite and won- 
derful being whose inheritance it is. 



It is not in the material creation alone that 
our nature finds aliment for its highest quali- 
ties. The human world, the wide and restless 
generation of our own kind, furnishes ample 
means and inducements. We are so constituted 
as to have our best faculties, our broadest en- 
terprises, our noblest emotions, elicited by the 
quick sympathies of our common race. We 
are generous, heroic, fearless in trial, and with 
countenances glowing from within as well as 
from without, amid the fires of martyrdom, that 
we may acquire the affections and praises of 
mankind. We build our loftiest and most du- 
rable monuments that we may live in the mem- 
ory of man. We give up household quiet, do- 
mestic joy, serene contemplation, life itself, and 
wrestle in the stormy conflict for a sudden and 
glorious grave, to which men may come and 
give their tears. We should therefore preserve 
a pure and comprehensive sympathy for our 
race, as one of the most precious and persua- 
sive instruments in accomplishing the true ends 
of our existence. Let man, the living, actual 
man, as he moves before us and around us, be 
our perpetual study and one of the constant 
and worthy objects of our regard. Let us also 
bring ourselves in daily communion with the 
generations that are past and distant. And 
how can this be attained ? 

Fortunately we are not bound, like lower 
natures, to that only which is present and 
immediate. Our lives are not hedged in by 
a little round of visible and present objects ; 
we can grasp the remote, the future, the past 
— that which is above and beneath us, and 
far off beyond the range of sense. It is by 
literature that we thus enlarge and elevate 
our vision ; and in no wise plan of life will lit- 
erature be forgotten. The recorded thought? 
of men of genius will teach us to what sublimt 
heights the human soul may be borne in mo 
ments of rapture and inspiration ; how cheer 
ful our human nature may show itself in its 
hour of genial and jovial enjoyment, and what 
a divinity of sorrow it may express in its no- 
blest periods of pure and gentle emotion. Here 
we may see great souls wrung and touched and 
wrapt away in the glorious agony of deep feel- 
ing and mighty thought, snatched from our com- 
mon life and hurried from our mortal view, but 
casting back a prophet's mantle of many death- 
less hues upon the earth. From these precious 
legacies, left to our race by its richest benefac- 
tors, we may learn what human nature has 
been, what it is, and what it should be. In 
them we shall discover pictures to startle, to 
bless, to cheer, and kindle our nature. From 
them, as from a great fountain, every faculty 
may draw that which it thirsts for, and may 
there be purified and strengthened. 

In all moods of the soul, in every access of 
sorrow, depression, and pain ; in the tumult of 
ambition and in the silent nook of contempla- 
tive life, some "voice, measured to the purpose, 
will speak to us from some good and precious 
page. A liberal devotion to literature is, per- 



THE TRUE ATMS OF LIFE. 



ha:5. of all himM ~::~5. best caleslatcd tc 
expaad and eaM cu z'L2szcin. tad ".: pre- 
serve its great primary elements from being 
■«h iiiijbmI and swept =— aj in the treachesx us 
: 

One important lesson to be derived from books 
I should not omit. They teach, us by their 
general temper and spirit to regard every object 
with interest, and to feel that nothing about us 



::" inftellecl are the ::.::?. be sto wed oa aatare, 

:7 : ■:-■.!:. rfs:;.-: i~: ' :i "f ~e :::.:- .\ 
life, does the creation in the midst of which we 
i~ rll. -.-;":1: -;- e.e~r=.:i ::" i2;r:-~i i~; 
:.t— -i-.-er^'.i :i --;_;;. ::: __::_: :;•;:. ..e: 
may labor. 

As far as it lies within ns, and within the 
reach of our endeavor, we should striTe to 
~:.^e :;..5 :":::;:;:: :~~-^z— :;.e - ;s: :":r::zi:-; 



is beneath our attention or can not contribute to that can belong to man — our own. Let 
rational enjoyment. By that magic which be- • shut out petty cares, low passions, and unworthy 
longs to genius alone, a charm has been im- desires, and in the silence of a pure breasi, 
parted to a thousand objects which in them- ' this kindly visiter may, perhaps, enter in and 



selves are barren, trivial, and unprofitable; so : bless us, and ere it depart, it may, like the 
that what in nature has been left unfinished or , magician of the eastern at ry, anoint our eyes 



nnfurnished by the Creator himself, has been so that we shall thenceforth behold nothing but 



splendor and beauty through the earth. To 

exalted spirit of duty and affection, a noble, 
cultivated, and susceptible nature, is an 



supplied by the creative and liberal hand of 
gifted men. Literature has thus lent a r! 
nature i has peopled her void and 

desert places with Ler own cheerful and har 

progeny. Could we keep our souls open to the and distinction in any man. 
pure impulses awakened by genius and nature \ Wd system of philosophy or morals, it seems 
how happy would be this brief life of ours ! tc i ud gendnc which conflicts 

Could we retain the childish wonder and sen- ; with this liberal cultivation of* the powers ; 
sibility of youth, and acquire the maturity of j which depresses some and allows others to start 
manhood together, how smoothly and wisely \ into bold and prominent relief. The general 
would our days go by ! This can not be. The j harmony of character must be preserved or the 
boy is alive to every impulse from within and j great commonwealth of human faculties falls 
from without ? no cloud passes thi :o terrible and disastrous confusion ; those 

without its influence c :ible temper; which have been degraded and disfranchised 

ectacle of nature or art that does not '. finding cruel avengers in such as have acquired 



awaken a certain magic sense of wonder and a fearful and irregular ascendency. 

delight. The man hardens ; his mind becomes \ Many, if not all, of the gloomy troubles oa 



rigid, like his body, and all these influences fall ] which history feeds, have had their source in 
upon him unheeded or with faint effec* .e and unchecked pas- 



only men born with a peculiar tenderness and sions or propensities. 
beauty of character, who continue through { Sometimes, imagination obtaining the entire 
manhood and age plastic to the va: . ^tery, the steadfast worli were 

under which they pass. To preserve so;r :om its moorings and rolled about 

thing of the boy, or at least the boy's feelings on a wide sea of speculation, vainly searching 
in our haughty and proud manhood, and in our for some unattainable shore of adventure, now 
calculating and seliis; ra to but fc g for the holy sepulchre in the east, and 

e of the noblest arts of life: now drifting madly toward the westt. 
to keep the soul open 10 the power of what is Dorado. 

great in nature, sublime in humanity, lovely in J Again, where the strict judgment, the purely 
beauty, or gentle in fee moral powers of man have held the supren 

To : :eptibility of , unmated with the g Imenta and unre- 

nature soon passes away for ever, but, praised strained by the enlightened intellect, we have 
be Heaven, there is a race of men whose duty had persecution, martyrdom, baleful fires, and 
and privilege it is to bear on high the odshed. And when, on the other har 

torch, and lend a new light to mankind by intellectual nature has attempted this solitary 
which everything shall gain back a portion of authority, disdaining counsel from the heart and 
the freshness and lustre it possessed in our silencing the great voice of duty, mankind have 
youth. ' themselves in the frivol. i of 

<ings be with them and eternal praise, schoolmen and the pigmy literature of Delia 

s and nobler . . Cmscan authors. 

The Poets, who en earth have made ns heirs j Q connex i n with this broad and ample de- 

Of truth and pure deueht bv hearenJv Uts.^ . r . 

•pment of our powers, another important 

It is the prerogative of inspired natures to duty resting upon us all, is to select, as far as 
present ol J objects to our minds as if they were in us lies, our own position in life ; nay, I would 



to make us see more in stars, streams_ 
mountains, than mere material objects, and to 
link one majestic or lovely thing with another 
bringing to .ether the remotest and placing them 



almost say, the very place and climate where 
we shall live. Possessing a nature so compli- 
cated and so finely sen«itivc to all influences, 
whether from within or from without, man 



side by Bide to illustrate each other and thus ! should render the same justice and grant the 
multiply nature itself. Thus, by a high effort | same privileges to his own nature as he be- 



298 



MISCELLANIES. 



stows on other objects of his care. For Ids 
garden he chooses an upland, of a healthy soil, 
a pleasant exposure to the sun, and a spot 
where the gentle showers of summer may fall 
not unblessed. His watch-towers and observa- 
tories he plants upon an eminence, looking 
forth on a wide region of hill and valley, and 
summoning by their majestic altitude, all earth 
and heaven into the range of their vision. 
Shall he deal less wisely and justly by his own 
nature than by these ? Shall he not choose for 
himself a station in life, a condition of circum- 
stances, a range of outward objects which 
shall exercise the happiest authority over the 
nice organs of sense, and the delicate elements 
of character ? A man may be said to be the 
result of all that he has known, seen, heard, 
and felt. It is of high importance, then, that 
he should see, know, feel, and hear, that which 
will exert the most refined and exalted influence 
over his mind, passions, and affections. We 
are bound by our nature to no one condition of 
action ; there is not one business, one pursuit, 
and one happiness provided for all men. Hu- 
manity is given to each of us to make of it 
what we can ! Lofty natures require lofty in- 
citements to action. The ear that is deaf to 
the soothing music of the dulcimer may be 
stirred by the roll of the drum, or the clangor 
of the trumpet. The sky may be the holiest 
spectacle to one, and the fair earth awaken the 
dearest solicitude of the other. To every man 
there is a class of objects, associations, sights 
and sounds, that speak to him with peculiar 
force and agency. 

Hard and stern realities are the best nurse, 
of some natures, while others grow and expand 
in an atmosphere filled with the soft radiance 
of poetic light, and peopled by fancy with in- 
numerable images of splendor and renown. 
One pursues fame, and in fame finds his best 
reward and true felicity — all his powers brought 
into action, his whole being aroused — the au- 
dience and occasion such as suit the temper of 
the man. Another in some secluded nook passes 
his days happy in peaceful labors and slumbers 
unbroken by dream, vision, or hope. One 
character shows to best advantage in the 
broad blaze of noon ; another, in the milder 
splendor of morning ; and a third, in a glim- 
mering twilight, half way between fame and 
obscurity. 

There are great influences, too, of city and 
of country which sweep over large masses of 
men. In a mighty metropolis a man's nature 
is fed and excited from a thousand sources. It 
is stimulated to action by the loud roar of the 
multitude ; it is kindled into enthusiasm by the 
daily sight of a thousand faces ; an inquisition 
is fixed upon it from a thousand eyes. Bad 
passions can not go long here without a promp- 
ter; nor benevolent purposes long without an 
object. He stands amid the clash of a Babel, 
and a perpetual tumult is stirred within his 
breast in which new and newly compounded 
motives of action are daily springing up. Noth- 



ing is done simply as if he stood alone in the 
view of Heaven. Then, with an observant 
eye, what crowds of strange and curious images 
are engendered in the brain by this swift and 
varied phantasmagoria of life! Transitions 
from fortune to famine ; great men toppled 
down from their elevation, and little men raised 
on a pedestal as if they were gods. Here he 
can laugh at one moment and weep at the 
next. In the train of sun bright fashion and 
beauty, dark sorrow walks as a mourner, and 
every man's shadow is but a gloomy monitor of 
distress. The picture of life is made up of 
startling contrasts ; gloom of more than mid- 
night darkness — joy of more than meridian 
splendor. Here ambition stalks forth and as- 
sumes a kingly post, and the next moment oc- 
cupies a coffin. This is a wonderful school of 
human nature, but is it alone the wisest and 
best ? I think not ; but if it be, and our duty 
assign us a station here, let us not forget the 
cheerful regions that lie beyond. From the 
noise and madness, let the wise man steal forth 
at times to other scenes where nature sits alone, 
and where he may learn some lessons from her 
unpurchased and incorruptible voice. 

Among the healthiest influences that can be 
brought to bear upon his nature, let him visit 
the green fields often ! No unwise thought — no 
dark passion rises from the pure bosom of the 
earth. There he will have happy meditations, 
prosperous periods of thought, and, if his 
childhood have been familiar with the scene, 
thronging recollections that will swell his heart 
and overflow at his eyes in tears of passionate 
delight. Let him see the green fields often ! 
for there he will walk with angelic quiet, se- 
rene contemplation, and when he returns, if re- 
turn he must, to the crowded and raging city, 
these sweet companions will champion him 
back, and crossing, perchance, the noisy bounds 
will be content to dwell with him awhile and 
cheer his heart in the intervals and calm hours 
of strife and gain. Let him visit the green 
fields often ! there he will renew his youth and 
acquire a fresh and cheerful spirit that shall be 
better to him in his old age than rank, wealth, 
or worldly honor. 

Let other influences be sought and cherished 
as they adapt themselves to the requirements 
of each man's nature. If the ocean move him 
with a special power, let him visit the ocean 
and feel its greatness. Let his mind heave and 
expand with the heaving mountain wave, 
stretching far onward into the dark distance 
and the darker future. If the thunder of the 
cataract utter a more audible voice to him, let 
him stand by its side while his nature wrestles 
and grows strong in the embrace of the great 
God of waters. Or if, on the other hand, in 
the thronged assemblies of men his soul is 
more deeply moved, and the inspiration of high 
purposes breathed more fully upon him, let 
him seek their companionship and school him- 
self amid the multitudinous tumult. These are 
higher and worthier objects than fortune, con- 



THE TRUE AIM OF LIFE. 



299 



quest, victory in great battles, or triumph in 
the loud senate of nations. 

Another great consideration I would urge as 
an important aid in attaining the true aims of 
life : namely a devout and generous love of 
our native land. A sincere and earnest attach- 
ment to the land of our birth, is calculated to 
awaken the whole soul into healthy action ; to 
appeal to us by a thousand silent sympathies, 
and by casting a charm around the scene in 
which we dwell, impart to our nature a genial 
excitement under which its best powers are 
exerted. To love our country is to love life, and 
to strive to make that life happy by lending a 
romantic interest to the spot in which it is cast. 
Our country, if we truly love it, evokes our 
feelings, our judgment, our imagination, and 
solicits these, by an unseen persuasion, to em- 
ploy themselves in adorning and exalting the 
object of their regard, and in contributing to 
its well-being with all the strength and capaci- 
ty they possess. Where that country is a sub- 
lime and noble one, and her external aspect 
grand and lovely, we should endeavor to make 
ourselves worthy of it, and to show that the 
human spirit can be no less great and generous 
than the outward objects with which it copes. 
Who has not felt, at some period or other of 
his life, an ardent wish, a burning desire, to 
link himself in some way or other, with the 
destinies of his country, to live in his land's 
language, and to leave some memorial behind 
him in which his country should have a claim ? 
Who knows not some little spot, some humble 
stream, which is nearer to his heart because it 
belongs to the land of his birth, the bower of 
his boyhood, the shelter and solace of his de- 
clining years ? 

By some, patriotism, or love of country, is 
regarded as an airy bubble, raised by cunning 
statesmen to dazzle and bewilder the multitude. 
They speak of it as if there were in reality no 
such thing as a genuine and honest attachment 
to one's country. Is there, then, no solid 
foundation in the constitution of our nature on 
which to build such an affection ? Are there 
no claims that plead in the heart for such a 
love ? Here we first saw the morning light ; 
here we drank in the first breath of the pure 
air. From its bosom we first beheld the glad 
spectacles which cheer and illumine our life. 
The first rainbow that we ever looked on 
spanned our native land; the first sunset, 
whose splendors made our young hearts dance 
with joy, was kindled on the horizon of 
our country. It is here that we have first 
known spring-time and autumn, and the genial 
round of seasons. Here we saw the first 
odorous flower ; and here we first beheld the 
distant hill-tops and the broad green wood 
tinged with the glory of the sun. From this 
chosen scene of our existence we first looked 
abroad on the starry miracle of a sustained 
and balanced universe. Here dawned upon 
our minds our earliest conceptions of duty, 
justice, kindred, and fellowship with man. 



Here we first felt the warm embrace of a 
mother's love and the first pressure of a friend- 
ly hand. It is here we have shed our first 
tears, and felt all the tender emotions that 
spring up over the grave of those we have 
loved. Here, in a word, we first had life ; and 
here, in the dispensations of sovereign power, 
we shall lay it down. Should not the spot of all 
these gentle and affecting associations be dear to 
us ? Should it be as common earth ? We do no 
wrong to our nature by a devout and earnest 
love of the land in which we live, but rather 
render it an acceptable service and aid its 
powers in their development by all the impulses 
of hope, reason, and affection, that grow from 
such a love. 

Another important and genuine aim of life 
is to regulate the action of our own mind and 
character on the mind and character of others. 
The influence of man on man can not be 
measured. Human nature is so full of startling 
echoes and reflections, that a voice can scarce- 
ly be raised or a light held up in any corner of 
the earth without creating everywhere a thou- 
sand responses, and returning the original 
image in innumerable colors of surprise, indig- 
nation, horror, and joy. In a narrower circle 
mind acts upon mind with fearful force. Lured 
on by the mutual voice of man, human beings 
have reached their highest fortune or have been 
plunged into utter and abject misery. Sustain- 
ed by the generous homage of a few wise and 
steadfast friends, one of the great masters of 
our age has toiled for half a century and is 
now hailed a poet by the general acclaim of the 
world. By human sympathy and influence 
great enterprises are pushed to a successful 
issue ; purposes that lurked in the breast have 
been matured into large and prosperous results ; 
conjecture has ripened into discovery, faith 
swelled to martyrdom, and out of our common 
and vulgar clay an almost angelic creature been 
fashioned. So vast are the operations of human 
sympathy, that pure natures, by its perversion, 
may be brought down to degradation and shame, 
and fiendish ones, by its higher influence, be 
elevated to beauty and honor. 

There are auspicious moments when the soul 
lies open, by some natural and imperceptible 
movements of its springs, when lofty thoughts 
and happy visions glide serenely into the mind, 
and when we are gently disposed to receive 
sweet influences and grant them a residence in 
the breast. It may be in the red twilight of 
summer, that the heavenly visitant is disclosed ; 
it descends, perchance, in the soothing August 
shower, or may flow upon us with the invisible 
wind that stirs the green blades of the meadow 
with life. These are the golden moments when 
the influence of man on man is most deeply nnd 
happily felt. We all have these, nor should wc 
let them pass in ourselves or in others, without 
profit. It is these moments of natural revrla 
tion, if I may so call them, that can »ive thf 
brightest and truest colors to our lives. If wc 
could always be what we are under the moincu 



300 



MISCELLANIES. 



tary inspiration of these divine awakenings, 
old Eden would be restored and man would 
walk again with his Maker without fear and 
without reproach. Let no such moment — for 
"but a few such are granted to us — pass by un- 
heeded or unimproved. Then is the chosen 
hour to enter the bosom of our fellow-man and 
leave there some durable impress of goodness, 
beauty, and truth. It is the peculiar privilege 
of genius and eloquence to create a condition 
of mind, in many respects, kindred to this, and 
to win their way to the heart and there plant 
the everlasting seeds of truth in a soil thus 
genially prepared for their welcome. 

Contemporary and co-ordinate with this, is 
the duty to sustain great truths, and the dis- 
countenanced advocates of great truths, in the 
midst of doubt, opposition, and calumny. Into 
the hands of a few chosen spirits falls, often- 
times, the custody of principles vital to the 
best interests of mankind. Scorned, slandered, 
ridiculed, it is their generous labor to hold up 
the banner of some outcast truth, and carry it 
forward amid the clamors of an ignorant and 
passionate multitude. A few fearless and high- 
souled men in every generation act the part of 
posterity to pure and lofty opinion, and antici- 
pate in themselves and by their own sagacious 
hardihood, the verdict of that impartial tribunal. 
Wherever, then, we see a vital truth delivered, 
a noble creation of genius, a suppressed but 
struggling thought that belongs to mankind, 
let us bring it forth to the light, give it our 
countenance and support, and fix it on an emin- 
ence where the world can not but behold it, and 
in the end fall down in worship of its excellence 
and grandeur. 

Common opinions, of use to the daily inter- 
ests of men, will find friends and patronage 
in every street and marketplace ; but new, 
vast, and sublime creations, unfamiliar to the 
vulgar mind, and startling to the trained criti- 
cism and judgment of the day, require that 
such as are capable of comprehending them, 
should form themselves into a resolute guard, 
and, by union, firmness, and a high tone of 
manly and vigorous daring, urge them on the 
attention of the world. No great truth, no sub- 
lime creation, can utterly perish ; but the hour 
of its triumph may be held back, and a thou- 
sand hearts be buried in the earth, that would 
have been thrilled, refined, and exalted, by the 
glorious vision, had it come earlier to greet 
their eyes. 

How blessed a consolation would it be to us 
in old age — yea, even in an old age of poverty, 
sorrow, and obscurity — that we have seen in si- 
lence no good man trampled on, no great prin- 
ciple crushed, which we might have saved from 
such dishonor ; have fled from the advocacy of 
no friend because he was poor ; have sought 
the shelter of no unrighteous error because it 
was strong, and might beat off the dark shower 
of malice, oppression, or popular madness ; 
have not fawned on brutal or vulgar pomp ; 
and can close our eyes on a world which has 



had in us no example of time-serving, cunning 
cowardice, or a prudent and considerate love of 
self and selfish ends. Not to have soothed 
the anguish of some broken spirit; not to have 
resisted unjust aggression ; to have refrained 
from upholding the truth through fear, favor, 
or hope of reward ; to have allowed insolent 
magistracy to pervert or dally with the right, 
or furious multitudes to invade public sanctu- 
aries or private homes ; to have shrunk back 
from stretching a hand to an overwhelming and 
sinking fellow-being because he has sinned ; to 
have frowned down one honest smile in a poor 
man's face, or to have wrung one tear from a 
desolate woman's eye ; these will be gloomy at- 
tendants about a death-bed ; a horrible retinue 
to herald us into a perilous and fearful hereaf- 
ter ; these, these it is that make the grave dark 
and terrible ! 

Finally, if we adopt this broad and liberal 
plan of cultivating our powers and affections, 
by every faculty developed, we shall expand the 
circle of our enjoyments, the grasp of our 
minds, and the true manliness of our characters. 
Where before we crept along impaired of the 
very limbs that should aid our motions, we now 
assume an erect and vigorous gait, and an eye 
that smiles on the varied scenes and truths of 
life with an intelligent joy. We thus provide 
for ourselves a wide range of objects on which 
to lavish our justice, affection, our observation 
and fancy, our whole passionate and thoughtful 
nature. Embracing thus many topics, and en- 
larging our minds to the comprehension of a 
wide range of duty and affection, we will be- 
come endowed with a more just judgment, a 
keener insight into right and wrong, and a 
general capacity for action and meditation un- 
known to us before. Many things which seem- 
ed distasteful and repulsive to our narrow 
vision, will now start up into significancy and 
beauty under the authority of some newly de- 
veloped sense of enjoyment. All life will then 
be full of meaning. The sad, the humorous, 
the imaginative, will need no interpreter but the 
faculty furnished by nature, to apprehend them. 
From no phase of human nature, no condition 
of men, can we then turn away our eyes with- 
out injustice to the great law written in the 
soul. We wiJ glow at the thought of heroic 
daring ; weep over the sorrows that afflict gentle 
natures, and smile at the grotesque and comic 
exhibitions of humanity in the ordinary walks 
of life. We can then sit with the philosopher 
in his cell, and feel a kindred rapture in the 
contemplation of the starry vastness and ma- 
jesty of the heavens, and with him weigh out 
the glories and planetary masses of infinite 
space. Amid the mountains we will wander 
with the poet, and listening to the roar of dis- 
tant waters, have the divine particle, the bless- 
ed imagination, stirred with a deep fervor with 
in us. With the humbler moralist and th 
shrewd observer of life, we will lake our po- 
sition in the thoroughfare and catch, with a 
pleased eye, the strange humors, the cunning 



NEW ETHICS OF EATING. 



301 



dealings and actions of common men. Sky, 
ocean, human faces, human thoughts, the for- 
tunes of rich and poor, God's anger in the 
storm and earthquake, man's lesser rage in 
battle and revenge, ambition, love, the finer 
and coarser passions of the soul, our destiny 
here and hereafter, will pass under the cogni- 
zance of this organized and balanced intellect, 
and each will have its due place accorded to it. 
All objects, in such a mind, will attain their 
just position, have their peculiar influence, and 
be permitted to co-operate together in building 
up that noblest of earthly existences, a human 
soul. An exquisite harmony will pervade our 
life and character. Every passion will enjoy 
its due growth and enlargement ; every faculty 
move in conjunction with its kindred powers, 
and none in this well-ordered assemblage, will 
venture to usurp an unnatural and unwise 
supremacy. The human spirit will then stoop 
under no despotism, whether of lawless imagi- 
nation, harsh reason, or benighted conscience. 
The world will not then assume to the eye a 
level and repulsive smoothness, clothed in a 
single and sombre hue, but will be disclosed in 
varied shapes, hills, valleys, ample plains, and 
be tinged with a thousand happy and cheerful 
colors. Our life will not be single but a hun- 
dred fold ; every object will have many true and 
just interpretations, which shall gather around 
it like rays, and constitute the brightness and 
effulgence of truth whose whole countenance 
we shall then behold, as far as men may be- 
hold it, turned with a full gaze upon our 
own. Under this many-colored standard we 
shall pursue the triumphant march of life, 
while melodious sounds of many measures 
cheer us on. 

We shall then know how joyous a place is 
this world of ours ; how many sweet objects it 
bears when rightly regarded. We shall then 
repent that we have ever uttered one harsh 
word against it, and shall weep to leave it with 
its varied blessings behind. It will be a hard 
thing, after all, to leave this pleasant chamber 
of the earth in which we have dwelt so long. 
It will be something to give up the bright sky, 
and the green woods, and the blue waters, to 
go and dwell with the worm. Our old familiar 
friends, the forest, the mountain, and the 
stream, must henceforth know us no more. 
The silent shadow of the tree, the sweet voice 
of the bird, and the glowing sunset, must no 
longer look upon us, nor make music for our ear, 
nor a cool shadow for our feet. We must yield up 
the true friend and forget and forego his em- 
brace. The smile, the trust, and the tender 
caress of woman must never more be our por- 
tion or our solace. It is true we are to be ap- 
parelled in glory and to put on the garments of 
angels; but what can recompense us, what 
height of glory, what rapture of bliss, for those 
purely human joys which made a part of our 
lot on earth ? We would, if so permitted, bear 
something of our mortality with us even to the 
gate of heaven, and add it as a worthy ingre- 



dient to the nobler elements of celestial happi- 
ness. We are now, as it were, in the vestibule 
and outer court of nature ; before and above us 
the solemn temple, the vast cathedral of the uni- 
verse, towers and broadens into immeasurable 
extent. Ere we are admitted let us prepare our 
hearts for this mighty habitation ; let us lift up 
our imaginations, purged of earthly grossness, 
to the height and sanctity of that great struc- 
ture ; so that when we enter in, our feeble and 
guilty spirits may not tremble at its vastness, 
nor shrink back from its holy and enduring 
grandeur ! 



NEW ETHICS OF EATING.* 

[New York Review, Oct., 1837.] 

The world is peopled by two classes of be- 
ings, which seem to be as cognate and neces- 
sary to each other as male and female. Char- 
latans and dupes exist by a mutual dependance. 
There is a tacit understanding, that whatever 
the one invents the other must believe. All 
bills which the former draws, the latter comes 
forward at once and honors. One is Prospero, 
the other his poor slave Caliban. The charla- 
tan tricks himself out in a mask, assumes a 
deep, hollow voice, and struts upon the stage ; 
while the dupe sits gaping in the pit, and takes 
every word that drops from the rogue's mouth 
for gospel truth and genuine philosophy. It 
would really seem as if the two parties had en- 
tered into a solemn compact, that wherever the 
one exhibits as charlatan, the other, by an ab- 
solute necessity, agrees to be present as simple- 
ton. Let the rogue open shop to dispense pills, 
the simpleton, as soon as he learns the fact, 
hies to the place of trade, and, pouring down 
his pence on the counter, takes his box of spe- 
cifics and walks complacently away. The 
knaves seem to consider the world as a rich 
parish — a large diocese of dunces, into which 
they have an hereditary and prescriptive right 
to be installed. They are never at rest until 
they have some subject on which to hold forth 
in public; some novel doctrine running against 
the grain of the old good sense ; some antiqua- 
ted sophism dressed in a new suit, to be put 
forth to surprise and startle the community, and 
gather around it (as a gay adventurer) an 
army of disciples. These men constantly as- 
sume an attitude of battle. They wage war 
upon everything past, present, and to come : 

"Rather than fail they will decry 
That which they love most tenderly: 
Quarrel with minced pies, and dispai I 
Their liest and dearest friend plum-pen 
Fat pig and goose Itself oppose. 
And blaspheme custard through the nose." 

* Dyspepsy Forestalled and Resisted; or Lectures 
on Diet. Regimen, and Employment . delivered to the 

students ol Amherst College, Spring term, 1S3H. Uv 

Edward Hitchcock, Professor ol Chymlstn and Natu 
torj In that institution. Amherst. Published by 
J. S. &. C. Adams, A 



$02 



MISCELLANIES. 



General ignorance, with a smattering of med- 
ical knowledge ; some fluency in speaking, or 
readiness with the pen ; great tact in discover- 
ing the disposition, and skill in the manage- 
ment of a certain class of persons ; an air of 
easy, cool impudence in public ; an oracular and 
self-possessed manner in private, are parts of 
that beautiful mosaic — an apostle of dietetics. 
Of such materials are framed those little men 
who attempt upon the earth to rival Deity ; who 
assume his thunder and trident ; his power to 
shake the heart with fear ; to regulate the hu- 
man system ; and to denounce penal fires, and 
all imaginable and unimaginable tortures on the 
head of rebellion. These are the cunning plot- 
ters who work upon weak minds through their 
fancies and doubts. " They give a life and 
body to their fears." Such men, broken down 
in health and dyspeptic, whose whole lives have 
been a scene of miserable and false feelings, 
engendered by a morbid condition of body, as- 
sume to become prophets and dispensers of 
health. These ruined and ruinous horologues 
would give the time o' day to the healthy world. 

In every age there has existed some favorite 
theory for the regeneration of the race ; some 
grand discovery (about to be made), which was 
to be universal, ubiquitous in its influence and 
success. At one time the philosopher's stone ; 
in the next age a short passage to the East In- 
dies ; and now, in a third and less romantic pe- 
riod, all the great objects of amelioration and 
amendment are to be accomplished by the sub- 
stitution of unbolted flour in the place of pure 
wheat and solid animal food. The authors of 
these miraculous discoveries believe that the 
human race is to be regenerated solely through 
the medium of the palate ; that the channels of 
access to the human head and human heart are 
not, as of old, tltrough the understanding and 
the affections, but through the alimentary ducts. 
Instead of winding along the shore of the Med- 
iterranean and over the shoals of the Indian 
ocean, they strike boldly across the Atlantic, 
and find the country for which they are in search. 
They take for granted that man has no imagi- 
nation, no heart, no nerves, no soul, nor arter- 
ies ; but that he is a creature all stomach ; that 
one mighty abdomen is the badge and property 
of human kind ; and that in it centres the ma- 
chinery, from it spring the movements, which 
build up and overturn states and empires — the 
strong fancy which moulds itself in epics and 
histories — the gentle pathos which melts us from 
the pulpit or in the elegy — the fierce wrath 
and " energy divine" which shake the stage ; 
all hold their court in this vast subterranean 
cavern, and from it rush forth upon the world. 

The first great canon of this code of living, 
is, that the flesh of beasts be banished from 
the table. Unholy pig, nor stupid veal, nor sil- 
ly mutton, corpulent roast-beef, nor presump- 
tuous sirloin, must appear before these chaste, 
dietetic vestals. Calf, sheep, ox, fowl, par- 
tridge — they know them not in animated na- 
ture. They have revised the edible universe, 



and from it stricken these blots and monsters. 
Tender-souled philanthropists ! They would 
know why these should not run rampant, and 
fly on the earth and in the air harmless ? They 
are joint denizens here ; fellow-citizens of ours, 
are these, good friends ! 

These natural feeders have " a touch that 
makes them kin" with us. Let them grow and 
multiply. Let them fatten in our meadows, and 
spread their pinions in our woods. Like us, 
they are for an equitable division of property ; 
they, too, are humble agrarians ; their desires 
are moderate. Till your fields until the sweat 
pearls upon your forehead ; you need not chaf- 
fer with customers — they will take the crop of 
grain off your hands. Gay creatures, they will 
frisk and eat for you. They have made us 
their stewards ; if we plough and plant, they 
will, most willingly, gather the increase. 

" The hog that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call, 
Lives on the labors of this lord of all ; 
While man exclaims, ' See all things for my use !' 
' See man for mine !' replies a pampered goose." 

Yes, these prodigal Pythagoreans, these vege- 
table philosophers, would give the earth up to 
the undisputed possession of Messrs. Ox, Hog, 
& Company. They would hand the title-deeds 
over to that firm. It has, perhaps, never en- 
tered the heads of these anti-carnivorous gen- 
tlemen, these minor omnipotents, who would 
change mankind into so many Nebuchadnez- 
zars and send the world to eat grass, what 
disposition they would make of their fourfooted 
rivals in the event of a general adoption of their 
principles. We would have to turn back into 
heathenism, and offer up a hecatomb to each one 
of the forty thousand gods of antiquity, to reduce 
the cattle-market within reasonable limits. 

" Man partakes," says one of the learned doc- 
tors of this school, " of the nature of the animal 
which he eats /" Here is a reverse system of 
metempsychosis. The old doctrine was, that 
the soul of a philosopher might possess the 
body of a donkey ; but it is an altogether new- 
fangled thing for the spirit of a Bakewell bull 
or a Merino to take up its residence in the body of 
a doctor of divinity, or that of a lecturer on Hy- 
giene. But so it is ; and it needs but a little disor- 
der of the nerves to make the imagination teem 
with frightful consequences of this new faith. 
Only to think of our rosy-cheeked friend, the 
Englishman, who feeds on roast-beef, in the 
excitement of a political argument, suddenly 
protruding upon us the horns of an ox ! Or 
Madame Beauvais, our vivacious and agreeable 
French acquaintance, getting animated into one 
of the frogs she loves so well ! Dear old Pisca- 
tor, too, who delighteth so in fishing and in eat- 
ing fish, to imagine him jumping from the boat 
and turning into one of his own favorite striped 
bass ! Forfend us, that we should hook up our 
bosom-friend, and salt him away for a mor- 
row's breakfast ! 

But the worst of it is, that these attenuated 
apostles of bran bread and water-cresses — 
whose worn-out organs can assimilate no strong 



NEW ETHICS OF EATING. 



303 



meat, can not be content with feeding their own 
way (which, if it be best for them, they have 
our free leave to feed as they list), nor be con- 
tented with simply proselyting by example and 
doctrine men of their own kind, but they insist 
upon imposing all the pains of moral excommu- 
nication upon us who have healthy digestions 
and cheerful spirits, unless we will follow their 
examples swear by their names, and feed by 
their rules. 

Men must be lean, ghostlike, sepulchral 
— who know not flesh at their tables. With 
them, to be lean is a virtue ; to be fat, an abom- 
ination. If you fill your garments well, 
and keep a running account with your butcher, 
they will have an eye on you — you are not to 
be altogether trusted. Crimes, in this code, 
are regulated by pounds avoirdupois. "An ad- 
herence to animal food ," says Hitchcock, " is no 
more than a persistence in the customs of savage 
life." We are barbarians, all. Now we put it se- 
riously to the disciples of this creed, whether they 
can call to mind a well-authenticated case of 
murder, or any act implying brutality or cruelty 
of disposition, committed by a corpulent man. 
A fat murderer would be a monster. The earth 
could not bear him up. It is true, such a one 
may be an accomplice in the second or third 
degree ; a rosy landlord, who holds the light, 
or a stout countryman, employed to watch un- 
der a hedge for the approach of the victim. It is 
a part of our nature, on the other hand, a Dra- 
conic law of our blood and being, that we should 
look upon a lean man with something of sus- 
picion in most cases ; in many, with pity and 
contempt. A corpulent man we may dislike 
or detest, but in his broad, open countenance, 
there is something so like candor and honest 
living, that it would require much to bring us 
to believe him a villain. In no case may we 
despise him, or charge him reasonably with a 
criminal act. It is your starvelings who fill the 
calendar of the sessions. It is they who com- 
mit thefts, burglaries, petit larcenies, and other 
contemptible small crimes. It is they who are 
seen running down streets with stray pieces of 
linen or pairs of pilfered Wellingtons. Who 
ever heard the cry, " Stop thief!" raised at the 
heels of a man who weighed two hundred and 
upward ? It would be an anomaly, a prac- 
tical solecism, to see the hands of a constable 
or sheriff's officer on the collar of a coat three 
feet across the shoulders. It is your fat, solid 
men — men who know the luxury of three full 
meals — that make good citizens, kind fathers, 
tender husbands. These men are all fed on 
beef. 

According to the dietetic system, food seems 
to be apportioned in an inverse ratio to the char- 
acter and rank of the feeder. Thus, man, the 
noblest creature of the earth, must fatten on 
bran bread and spare vegetables; while the 
horse, we suppose, is to feed on custards, and 
the right worshipful donkey on blancmange and 
ice-cream. 

Charles Lamb, in one of his essays, has an 



admirable battery of masked irony directed 
against vegetable feeders. It is a short sketch, 
supposed to be written by a lady (Hospita) de- 
scribing a gluttonous visiter. " What makes 
his proceedings more particularly offensive at 
our house is, that my husband, though out of 
common politeness he is obliged to set dishes 
of animal food before his visiters, yet himself 
and his whole family (myself included) feed en- 
tirely on vegetables. We have a theory that 
animal food is neither wholesome nor natural 
to man ; and even vegetables we refuse to eat 
until they have undergone the operation of fire, 
in consideration of those numberless little liv- 
ing creatures which the glass helps us to de- 
tect in every fibre of the plant or root before it 
be dressed. On the same theory we boil our 
water, which is our only drink, before we suffer 
it to come to table. Our children are perfect 
little Pythagoreans ; it would do you good to 
see them in their nursery, stuffing their dried 
fruits, figs, raisins, and milk, which is the only 
approach to animal food which is allowed. 
They have no notion how the substance of a 
creature that ever had life can become food for 
another creature. A beef-steak is an absurdity 
to them ; a mutton-chop, a solecism in terms ; 
a cutlet, a word absolutely without any mean- 
ing ; a butcher is nonsense, except so far as it 
is taken for a man who delights in blood, or a 
hero. In this happy state of innocence we 
have kept their minds, not allowing them to 
go into the kitchen, or to hear of any prepa- 
rations for dressing of animal food, or even to 
know that such things are practised. But, as 
a state of ignorance is incompatible with a cer- 
tain age ; and as my eldest girl, who is ten 
years old next midsummer, must shortly be in- 
troduced into the world and sit at table with us, 
where she will see some things which will shock 
all her received notions, I have been endeavor- 
ing, by little and little, to break her mind, and 
prepare it for the disagreeable impressions 
which must be forced upon it. The first hint 
I gave her upon the subject, I could see her re- 
coil from it with the same horror with which 
we listen to a tale of Anthropophagism ; but 
she has gradually grown more reconciled to it, 
in some measure, from my telling her that it 
was the custom of the world — to which, how- 
ever senseless, we must submit, so far as we 
could do it with innocence, not to give offence ; 
and she has shown so much strength of mind 
on other occasions, which I have no doubt is 
owing to the calmness and serenity superin- 
duced by her diet, that I am in good hopes 
that when the proper season of her defoit ar- 
rives, she may be brought to endure the sight 
of a roasted chicken or a dish of sweetbreads, 
for the first time, without fainting." 

We think one of the fares! Spectacles in the 
world must he, What IS Called, a Graham board- 

Inghonse, at about the dinner-hoar. Along a 

table, from which, perhaps, the too-eleganl and 
gorgeous luxury of a cloth is discarded (for WC 
have never enjoyed the felicity of an actual 



204 



MISCELLANIES. 



vision cf this kind), seated some thirty lean-vis- 
aged, cadaverous disciples, eying each other 
askance, their looks lit up with a certain can- 
nibal spirit, which, if there were any chance of 
making a full meal off each other's hones, might 
perhaps break into dangerous practice. The 
gentlemen resemble busts cut in chalk or white 
flint ; the lady-boarders (they will pardon the 
allusion), mummies, preserved in saffron. At 
the left hand of each stands a small tankard or 
pint-tumbler of cold water, or, perchance, a de- 
coction of hot water with a little milk and su- 
gar — (as Professor Hitchcock justly styles it) — 
"A harmless and salutary beverage;" at the 
right, a thin segment of bran bread. Stretched 
on a plate in the centre lie, melancholy twins ! 
a pair of starveling mackerel, flanked on either 
side by three or four straggling radishes, and 
kept in countenance by a sorry bunch of aspar- 
agus, served up without sauce. The van of 
the table is led by a hollow dish, with a dozen 
potatoes, rather, corpses of potatoes, in a row, 
lying at the bottom. 

At those tables look for no conversation, or 
for conversation of the driest and dullest sort. 
Small wit is begotten of spare viands. They, 
however, think otherwise. " Vegetable food," 
says the sagacious Hitchcock, " tends to preserve 
a delicacy of feeling, a liveliness of imagination, 
and acuteness of judgment, seldom enjoyed by 
those who live principally on meat." Green peas, 
cabbage, and spinach, are enrolled in a new 
catalogue. They are no longer culinary and 
botanical— they take rank above that. They 
are become metaphysical, and have a rare oper- 
ation that way ; they " tend to preserve a deli- 
cacy of feeling," &c. Cauliflower is a power 
of the mind ; and asparagus, done tenderly, is 
nothing less than a mental faculty of the first 
order. " Buttered parsnips" are, no doubt, a 
great help in education ; and a course of vege- 
tables, we presume, is to be substituted at col- 
lege in the place of the old routine of Greek 
and Latin classics. The student will be hence- 
forth pushed forward through his academic stud- 
ies by rapid stages of Lima beans, parsley, and 
tomato. Very good — we like your novelties in 
education. Nothing could certainly be more 
original, or more happily thought of, than a 
diet of greens for freshmen and sophomores, 
and, you must have something expansive and 
brilliant there, a regimen of sunflowers and 
pumpkin for the elder classes. We like this 
vastly. This is metempsychosis again. The 
" soul of Socrates might take up its residence 
in a stocking, weaver," as the doctrine used to 
stand ; but now, better still, a man may go out 
into the fields and cull just such a soul as he 
chooses, in the same " .ay as you select a coat 
in a tailor's shop, or a glove at the hosier's. 
He has a free range of faculties to draw upon. 
If he finds his sympathies begi to flag from too 
much use, or to soil from contact with the rude 
world, let him but step into his garden and 
gather a few of those vegetables " which tend 
to preserve a delicacy of feeling." We have 



here, also, a new specific for the composition 
of Shaksperes, Miltons, and Byrons. Poets are 
now to be turned into the meadow, and pre- 
pared for the production of a tragedy or 
epic, just as you fat a prize-ox or a piece of 
mutton. Such feeding tends to preserve a 
" liveliness of imagination." Statesmen and 
lawyers, who require " acuteness of judgment," 
will henceforward graduate on potherbs from 
the kitchen-garden. Sir Walter Scott must 
have been altogether at fault in the opinion ex- 
pressed in the autobiographical fragment pre- 
fixed to the Life. " After one or two relapses," 
says he, speaking of an illness he had suffered 
from, "my constitution recovered the injury it 
had sustained, though for several months after- 
ward I was restricted to a severe Vegetable 
diet. And I must say, in passing, that though 
I gained health under this necessary restriction, 
yet it was far from being agreeable to me : and 
I was afflicted, while under its influence, with a 
nervousness which I never felt before nor since. 
A disposition to start upon slight alarms — a 
want of decision in feeling and acting, which 
has not usually been my failing — an acute sen- 
sibility to trifling inconveniences — and an un- 
necessary apprehension of contingent misfor- 
tunes, rise to memory as connected with my 
vegetable diet, although they may very possi- 
bly have been entirely the result of the disor- 
der and not of the cure." It is clear, however, 
which way he leaned, although he speaks in the 
most guarded language. It will be observed, 
that he attributed to vegetable diet a peculiar 
malady, for which the dietetic professors assert 
it is a most admirable specific. 

The most lamentable aspect of the system 
and teachings of these apostles of improved di- 
etics is that which regards its moral character 
and influence. Not content with a total revo- 
lution of the whole world by the aid of absti- 
nence and fasting, they would turn the same 
engines toward heaven, and with them impi- 
ously, perhaps ignorantly impious, batter down 
the established muniments of gospel, morals, 
and truth. Not satisfied with the operations of 
their specific on mind and body, they would in- 
corporate their wild fantasies in the moral code, 
and place the dogma of an itinerant lecturer at 
the head of the commandments. These men 
have interleaved the Bible, and, scrawling their 
own absurd texts and comments upon the blank 
pages, put forth an improved version of the 
book of God. 

They would turn all the denunciations of 
scripture against the single sin of inordinate 
indulgence of the appetite. They would make 
repletion the Anti-Christ, and prove that penal 
fires and scorchings of conscience are prepared 
for him who dares partake in liberal measure 
of the gifts and bounties of Heaven. All things 
in the two testaments are, in the misty fancies 
of these fanatical dreamers, typical of intem- 
perance in eating. 

Thus, in the book of Numbers, occurs the 
] following passage : " So they did eat and were 



NEW ETHICS OF EATING. 



305 



filled, for he gave them their own desire ; they 
were not estranged from their lust ; but while their 
meat v>as yet in their mouths, the wrath of God 
came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and 
smote down the chosen men of Israel." Here, ac- 
cording to the dietists, is a vigorous argument 
against corpulency and animal food. On the 
surface it seems so ; and as the philosophical 
dogmatists to whom we refer, abhor the labor 
of diving, we suppose they are very well pleas- 
ed with such deduction. Because they were 
slain " while the meat was yet in their mouths," 
a judgment is pronounced, they believe, against 
animal food. This, therefore, is an argument 
for vegetable diet. But, by turning to a verse 
in the same chapter, which precedes the one 
we have quoted, the learned pundits will dis- 
cover that the Israelitish appetite was as keen 
for vegetable as animal diet ; so that The de- 
nunciation was directed as strongly against the 
one as the other. " Who shall give us flesh to 
eat ? We remember the fish which we did eat 
in Egypt freely ! the cucumbers, and the melons, 
and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic." 
Here is not only fish and flesh, but as select and 
delicate a regimen of greens as one could wish. 
But the " fattest" were slain. That is very 
true, and it seems to us (no very profound bib- 
lical critics) that they were particularly smit- 
ten because they repined against the manna 
which had been, to them at least, most healthy 
and invigorating sustenance. But with our 
new apostles it is no matter. They were pun- 
ished for rebellious murmuring, while their 
mouths were tilled with flesh — therefore, flesh- 
eating is sinful ; not merely eating too much 
of whatever it be, nor even intemperate flesh- 
eating — 'but any, the least degree of flesh-eating 
whatever. 

Not only (if they are to be believed) is Gra- 
hamism the great burden of the Scripture, but 
it is to be the great auxiliary in spreading 
Christianity over the earth. The fiend infidel- 
ity is to be put out of the way by nothing less 
than spare diet and a course of vegetables. 
" This demon," says Hitchcock, the erudite 
founder of the dietetic college, " can not be suc- 
cessfully met and encountered by the puny arm 
and shrinking sensibility of dyspepsy. It needs 
the resolution, the assured faith, and the ener- 
getic action of our pilgrim fathers. And then 
again, what but the strong arm, and the reso- 
lute courage, and unwavering faith, of men sus- 
tained by eupepsy as well as the grace of God, 
can urge forward, into the dark and untrodden 
fields of spiritual death, the mighty wheels of 
benevolence that are in motion ?" Sustained by 
eupejjsy as well as the grace of God .' This is 
good; it is admirable; a flight not contemptible 
— at least as high as the fifth heaven of inven- 
tion. Have courage — he will be shortly in the 
seventh ! Ivising on the wing, toward the region 
we have indicated, he bursts out in the full fer- 
vor of Gtahamism : "They were eupeptics who 
carried the gospel over the eastern primitive times. 
They were eupeptics who, in modern times, have 
U 



successfully engaged in the same work; and 

THEY MUST BE EUPEPTICS WHO ARE TO BRING 
ON THE MILLENIUM." 

We doubt much whether there will be any 
human beings extant by the arrival of the mil- 
lenium, if the dietetic system should be univer- 
sally adopted. It hath a rapid operation in 
translating its professors from the " smoke and 
stir of this dim spot." Their career on this 
road to health brings them speedily in sight of 
tombstones and family vaults. Pretending by 
their false and base empiricism to lengthen-, 
they absolutely abbreviate life. There is an 
amount of moral evil thus committed, which, 
but for the ignorance of its apostles, should 
place empirical dietetics at once on the list 
with murder. 

He who, in a time of scarcity, forestalls the 
market, and by a monopoly of provisions stints 
the people of their proper supply, is held guilty 
of treason to the community, and, in some codes 
of law, is subject to the penalty of death. But 
the dietetic preachers would actually snatch 
from the lips the very sustenance which its 
possessor has in abundance, or can purchase 
with ease. He perishes, deluded by the soph- 
isms of pretenders, in the midst of a full gra- 
nary. He falls surrounded by harvests of the 
richest wheat. He starves in sight of a thou- 
sand platters, smoking with substantial fare. 
In truth, this whole system seems to be a dis- 
guised and ignoble attempt to establish a kind 
of monkish creed in the New World. It is a 
phantom of the middle ages, revived from its 
slumbers, and put forth again into the waking 
light to marshal under its tattered and faded 
banner, retouched and repaired, all that class 
of human beings who, in every age, jump at 
novelties, and are willing to go out and join in 
a crusade against their own health, happiness, 
and peace of mind, provided it is done in 
the guise of accomplishing some mighty moral 
or national purpose, and provided some special 
mountebank appears boldly in the van to lead 
them on. In this case starvation has turned 
crusader and philanthropist, and by its stalwart 
strength promises to banish poverty and crime ; 
to annihilate acute and chronic diseases and 
nervous maladies ; to clear and strengthen the 
mind ; to elevate and purify the morals ; to 
brighten and invigorate the religious affections ; 
and, finally, to bring about the millenium ! 
Health, morals, and intellect, all hang on this. 
Eupepsy is the good principle, the evil one is a 
mighty dyspepsy. 

We may remark, in passing, th: v t me learned 
professor hints that history might be hereafter 
written on dietetic principles, and gives us an 
illustration of the manner' in which it could be 
managed, by speaking of England as present- 
ing « an alarming pdtftrasl between the enpep 
tic days of Elizabeth and the dyspeptic times 
of George the Fourth." Cooks, we suppose, 
arc henceforward to write the chronicles of the 
times, and waiters will take charge of memoirs 

and the lighter sketches of manners, morals, 



306 



MISCELLANIES. 



and customs. We may apply to them, in an- 
ticipation, the language which the learned pro- 
fessor of chymistry and natural history uses in 
reference to the wonders which might be 
achieved by a phalanx of eupeptic youth : " Oh, 
the light and influence which they might thus send 
out into the world and down to posterity, would not, 
like other emanations proceeding from a centre, 
spread and increase in the slow ratio of the square 
of the distance and the time; but in a ratio so 
high, that the quadratics of the millcnium could 
alone express and resolve it" I ! Certainly, one 
of the most singular and mathematical emana- 
tions we ever read of ! We think the profes- 
sor must have (in addition to his aforesaid 
duties) a small class in celestial trigonometry 
under his charge. 

The dietetic philosophers, whether they in- 
tend it or not, are practical atheists, for they 
rob God of one of his essential attributes, by 
supposing that he has created the animal and 
vegetable world merely to prey on each other 
and encumber the earth. They render it a 
shrewd problem, too, to explain why man has 
carnivorous teeth. 

We consider this system also as the most 
pernicious and abhorrent, when we look upon 
it as a fanatical attempt to shut out from man- 
kind certain sources of happiness aud enjoy- 
ment, which were clearly provided and intend- 
ed for them in the economy of the earth. We 
humbly believe that all things were made to be 
enjoyed rationally, temperately, and with an 
eye to the great Benefactor. The universe 
was not only built for the eye, that man might 
sit in its midst, like a child at a theatre, and 
gaze on its wonderful and shifting scenes, its 
strange and grand actings and decorations. 
There are also other senses which in their 
measure may be gratified. That is a poor mys- 
tery of gastronomy, which feeds the eyes and 
leaves the stomach famished. 

If these philosopherlings can not learn from 
the constitution and history of their own spe- 
cies what is due to themselves and their kind, 
let them turn to the animal creation and gath- 
er an example. They at least remind us of 
one class of feathered bipeds. Of all the fowls 
of the air, the most contemptible is a mongrel 
heron, known familiarly as the mudpoke. The 
mudpoke we take to be your best natural disci- 
ple of Grahamism. He feeds little, and that 
little does him small good. His digestion, such 
as it is, is rapid indeed, but dry. Lean-vis- 
aged and cadaverous, he sits upon a hard branch 
or rail, and looking heaven in the face, with a 
pharasaical expression of countenance, he drawls 
a short denunciation in loud treble, against 
high livers and good feeders. His skin hangs 
about his bones like a coat ill-cut. He keeps 
good hours, it is true — is never out late at night, 
like the nightingale — is never found at a mer- 
rymaking, nor high in the air, at morn, with the 
lark, singing out his gratitude to the Giver of 
all good. He feeds solitary on crusts and 
scraps ; drinks but little, and that of the stalest 



puddle ; and is, in fact, a Graham in feathers ; 
a deliverer of dry lectures, from sapless tree 
tops ; and his only fault is that his digestion is 
a trifle too lively. 

Those who have advocated in public the 
spare system of diet, have generally been men 
who have made a previous pilgrimage through 
the catalogue of maladies, and who, therefore, 
assume to be the most profoundly skilled in the 
prescriptions necessary for each. From having 
suffered much themselves, they believe they 
have an equitable privilege to make others suf- 
fer in a like degree. They become skilled in 
the gnostics of every complaint, and by a sweep- 
ing specific, purge the materia medica of every 
malady save that with which they, as patients, 
had been afflicted. Now, of all sorts of tam- 
pering, we think tampering with the human 
system is the most abominable and pernicious. 
There is a class of sciolists, and those of whom 
we have spoken belong to it, who believe that 
all kinds of experiments are to be ventured up- 
on the human constitution ; that it is to be 
hoisted by pulleys and depressed by weights ; 
pushed forward by rotary principles, and pulled 
back by stop-springs and regulators. They 
have finally succeeded in looking upon the hu- 
man frame, much as a neighboring alliance of 
stronger powers regards a petty state which is 
doing well in the world and is ambitious of 
rising in it. It must be kept under. It must 
be fettered by treaties and protocols without 
number. This river it must not cross ; at the 
foot of that mountain it must pause. An at- 
tempt to include yonder forest in its territories 
would awaken the wrath of its powerful supe- 
riors, and they would crush it instantly. Or the 
body is treated somewhat as a small-spirited 
carter treats his horse ; it must be kept on a 
handful of oats and made to do a full day's 
work. Famine has become custodian of the 
key which unlocks the gate to health, to knowl- 
edge, to religious improvement, and the mil- 
lenium ! 

Unless checked, this wild fanaticism will 
sweep through the land, overthrowing every 
social comfort, every physical enjoyment, ev- 
ery pleasure that springs from sense and refers 
to sense. Indulgence in the common luxuries 
of air and water, will be soon set down in the 
index expurgatorial as a crime ; and punish- 
ments and penalties be attached to every gra- 
dation of bodily comfort. To feel the pulse 
throb with joy, or the cheek glow with delight, 
or the heart beat under the genial influence of 
springtime or autumn ; in fine, to yield in any 
way to the generous and universal emotions of 
humanity, will next be deemed a damnable her 
esy and perversion of our moral faculties. The 
adventurous champions of this dietetical Quixot 
ism, would ride through the country armed caj 
a-pie with argument and denunciation, and, 
like the Moss-troopers of the Scottish border, 
snatch from the peasant's pot his haunch of 
mutton or round of beef, and force him to dii 
on kale and cold water. 



01 

§ 

id, 
er, 
of 
ine 



JEDUTHAN HOBBS. 



307 



These men know not — they have no dream 
— of the injury they would inflict on the poor 
by depriving them of animal food, and the lit- 
tle (what seems to us, at least, little) luxury 
of a healthy and savory meal. Their daily 
bread is the only comfort that many of the poor 
enjoy. They have no knowledge of books — no 
music — no pleasant, festive companies, where 
care is laughed or danced away — no concerts nor 
anniversaries — no resources of thought or con- 
versation — none of those delicate, refined sensa- 
tions, which are perpetual inlets to the thought- 
ful and educated — no poetical joy in the fair 
shows of nature, and at best nothing more than 
a ruder sort of religion, which exhibits itself in 
a simple, single, undoubting faith. Their "life is 
rounded with" a meal. In this they are impara- 
dised. Nature has not denied to them the common 
and yet sweet enjoyments of the palate. Sitting 
at their rude tables, with their clean and well- 
cooked mutton or steak, they are equal to kings. 
The most royal of the earth can not enthrone 
themselves with a finer sense of sweetness on 
golden thrones or under canopies of purple. 
Who would rob the poor of such dainties P 

Be not afraid ! ye poor of the land. God's 
bounties flow, in these regions at least, from a 
perennial urn. God still walks on the hill and 
in the valley, and cheers the husbandman in 
his labors. Be not afraid ! — forward through 
many years of household happiness, may ye look 
for well-filled boards and hearthstones savory 
with daily comforts and consolations. While 
God guides your plough and gives the increase 
to your honest toil, eat your bread in peace. 
No fanatical visionary, no arbitrary and self- 
willed man shall rob you of these. Your own 
good sense, the good sense of your friends and 
countrymen, will save you from the desolation 
which these wild men would bring upon you 
in common with all. 

The people will not hearken to their mad ap- 
peal. There is an instinct above all knowledge. 
Guided by that, our countrymen will scorn the 
starveling philosophy of Graham, and the wild 
theories of Hitchcock. Our broad meadows will 
still sustain their noble herds ; and still shall the 
cool stream and the open sea nurture its kind to 
strengthen and cheer the sons of the earth. Our 
rich wheatfields shall whiten as of old, and the 
pure loaf be called the staff of life, though igno- 
rant and reckless men would strike it down 
and bring man level with the earth and the 
brute that feeds on husks and grass. 

Sad and bitter consequences, God knows, 
have already flowed from these false doctrines. 
Alas ! how many pale students, future orna- 
ments and defenders of their country, if permit- 
ted to live; how many fair daughters; how 
many mothers, blessed and blessing ; how main- 
merchants, sagacious in business and libera] in 
leisure ; how many ministers of God, hallowed 
oracles and voices of Heaven ; how many of 
the good, the great, the young, and the ig W— 
the tender-hearted and the learned and wise, 
have already fallen before the arm of this hom- 



icidal and accursed dogma ? In pale and sick- 
ly troops they totter down the road to the 
grave and lay themselves on the cold pillow of 
their last slumber, emaciated, ghastly, the vic- 
tims of the cunning impostor who used imagi- 
nation as his tool, and with it undermined the 
" house of life." Upon their ashes we build a 
monument, dedicated to temperate enjoyment 
of the bounties of the air, the earth, and the 
sea ! 



[The author might, in mercantile phrase, evade 
legal liability on the two or three sketches follow- 
ing, on the ground that they were produced before 
he had arrived at an age when oue acquires the right 
to utter paper. As more advanced life is, however, 
glad enough at times to draw upon youth and 
habits then acquired, in excuse of older offences, 
the author foregoes his plea, with the hope of 
showing, by their reproduction, at how early a 
period he had fallen upon a vein of writing which 
(whether good or bad) he has since wrought 
upon in one or two more elaborate works. The 
" trick of it'' was, he thinks the reader will ad- 
mit, in the blood, and not caught from foreign 
sources.] 



JEDUTHAN HOBBS. 

A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF A METROPOLI- 
TAN BOOK-PEDLAR. 

{Knickerbocker Magazine, Jpril, 1835.) 

In his life-time Jeduthan Hobbs had never 
suited himself with a dwelling-place. He was 
ever flitting about, like a swallow on the wing, 
from garret to garret. He has chambers now, 
against which he can never more repine. A 
few nails, and boards of lath, have shut out 
apprehension, and care, and poverty. No 
longer shall rich repasts, and the panorama of 
delicate viands, move before his eye, which his 
tongue may not taste. No longer shall his 
gaunt form traverse the pavement of public 
hostels, living on steams and odors. From the 
unceremonious touch of catchpoles, henceforth, 
the person of Jeduthan Hobbs is sacred. 

They laid him according to his wish. He 
had prayed, almost to the last hour of his life, 
that Providence would grant him the farewell 
privilege of selecting a spot for his g 
which might be his own — the first and last 
can tie of proprety he should ever possess. And 
at the moment when death was holding his 
final parley for the surrender of his body, a 
missive arrived from a deceased aunt, bearing 
within a gift just sufficient to purchase the 
dying man the luxury of lenting independent U 
nil last habitation. 

It was chosen Mrnnsely — one lone, solitary 
strip of green, imbedded in rocks. It 



308 



MISCELLANIES. 



vain to attempt to fathom this fancy. Perhaps 
he wished to leave it as a testimonial — though 
dark and difficult the interpretation — that thus 
his heart had retained its freshness and verdure, 
in the very midst of the rough roads and stony 
circumstances of life. 

His face, when living, was the very dial-plate 
of hope. He lived on glorious expectation. He 
breakfasted on hope, dined on hope, and was 
even oftentimes forced, for the want of more 
substantial food, to make his supper from the 
same dish. Yet was he ever uncomplaining. 
He was monarch over all futurity. No black 
usurper dared intrude upon that ample realm. 
He peopled it with his own subjects. They 
never disobeyed his kingly authority, but ever 
came at his beck. How well I remember the 
last time I beheld him ! He had just given — 
poor and lowly as he was — a cheerful volume, 
to a pale, thin young man, in a faded black 
coat, who had been standing at a book-stall, at 
the corner of the street, filching a little mental 
entertainment from a meager collection of 
dingy tomes. " Poor fellow !" said Hobbs, " he 
has seen better days ; but he should needs be 
happy now, for I have given him a glorious 
companion, and I have just read to him these 
truth-speaking lines from good old Spenser.' 5 
And the kind donor set down his humble basket 
upon the flags, and with a benevolent chuckle, 
read thus from a thumbed, yellow-leaved oc- 
tavo : 

'•Ah ! why doth flesh, a bubble-glass of breath, 
Hunt after honor and advancement vain, 
And rear a trophy for devouring Death, 
With so great labor and long-lasting pain, 
As if his days for ever should remain 1 
Sith all that in this world is great or gay, 

Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay. 

«' Look back who list unto the former ages, 
And call to count what is of them become ; 
Where be those high-born men, those antique 
Which of all grandeur knew the perfect sum ? 
Where those great warriors, which did overcome 
The world with conquest of their might and main, 

And made one mear of the earth and of their reign V 

Thus, with a fine vein of philosophy, would 
Hobbs beguile penury of bitter remembrances, 
and rob sharp misery of its pangs. 

He would sit in his veteran arm-chair, at the 
end of a long summer day, and looking through 
the dusky panes of a narrow dormer window, 
point to the sun melting afar over the Jersey 
hills — dropping gently and softly, as 3 babe to 
its evening slumbers. « That sun," he would 
exclaim, " rises brighter to-morrow, because it 
rises on a happier man. My friend, I am not 
crack-brained nor visionary. In truth, poor 
denizens like me have no right to share that 
privilege of the titled and wealthy. But I do 
believe there is some great blessing in store for 
me — some overwhelming joy — that, like wine 
on the lees, is but improving its flavor, by age, 
for my palate." 

" But, Hobbs, how can you revel in such de- 
lights, with these wrecks about you? How 



can you, from a garret, like Moses from Pisgah, 
steal such glimpses of a promised land ?" 

" Do you see," was his answer, " yonder 
flight of birds, fanning the rosy air around the 
setting sun ? Mark you how their wings are 
gilded with royal gold and purple, as they bathe 
themselves in the fading day-beams? So, 
my friend, every thought, every imagination, 
every common object and meaner sight, in 
passing through my soul, is transmuted into a 
precious and golden reality, that, though it 
may have no existence in this world of fact, 
transports me into a heaven !" 

"What heaven? The bigot's— the secta- 
rian's ?" 

" No, friend, there can be no heaven where 
dwells the bigot or the sectarian. I mean his 
heaven whose tastes are refined, whose eyes 
are as crystal mirrors, reflecting joyously the 
Creator's little universe below, the fair scenes 
of nature, and the glories of air, earth, and 
sea. Such alone can live in heaven. To brute 
minds — minds that have no spirit, but are all 
sinew and flesh — heaven would be but a * worse 
hell.' " 

Thus have we whiled hour after hour, in 
pleasant converse, pilfering many a smile from 
the wrinkled face of time, and smoothing the 
yet untrodden road to the inevitable church- 
yard. The vocation of my friend was a modest 
and humble one. He was a book-pedlar. He 
wended from house to house — a merchant of 
the mind — bearing in his basket and pack the 
rich products of every clime in which intellect 
grows and buds. 

He was born with a love for books. The 
first object on which his infant eyes opened, 
must have been the family Bible, or a copy of 
the household almanac. He delighted, as soon 
as his feeble hands could lift a volume, to gaze 
on its black rows of letters. When his mind 
expanded, its first dawnings were spent in mar- 
shaling words in order, to form some little 
" composition." He took a kind of military 
pride, in drilling the twenty-four letters of the 
alphabet, in banding them into petty companies. 
As he grew older he assumed his calling. It 
was congenial, though lowly. He loved to 
pass from dwelling to dwelling, dealing out, as 
it were, delight by the handful — handing over 
whole treasures of joy, volumes of fun and 
knowledge. And he himself had been at the 
festival, he had partaken of the feast. 

He came at length to be known, to be loved, 
to be welcomed. His face broadened and 
brightened into the sun of many a house ; and 
wherever he threw a beam, some tender flower, 
or some happy sentiment would spring and 
blossom. He was the sower of good seed, and 
he reaped the harvest that follows it. 

And thus he spent twenty years. He was 
the father of the book-pedlars. Much they 
honored him ; and, when chance had gathered 
a circle of them together, they listened with 
eager ears to his tales of the elder days of their 
trade — how it had begun from nothing, how, on 



BEN. SMITH, LOAFER. 



309 



one bright summer morning, when he had risen 
early and saw the milkmen and bakers busy- 
distributing their comforts, the thought struck 
him, what a good and pleasant thing it would 
be, if some kind people would thus actively 
and alertly serve the aliment of mind to as 
needy customers — how the thought would every 
morning visit his soul — how he gave it wel- 
come — and, finallj r , how he became the pioneer 
in the cause, dandling, as it were, the profes- 
sion upon his knee, until it had arrived to its 
present manhood, sending its missionaries into 
every nook and corner of the heathen city. 

Farewell, Hobbs ! I had said more and bet- 
ter things of thee, but my pen would drop 
nothing but tears. Farewell ! Thou hast left 
this world of book-making, book-reading, and 
book-peddling, and art gone, I trust, where 
angels chant poetry, and the face of thy Maker 
shall be to thee, for perusal, thy brightest book ! 



THE LATE BEN. SMITH, LOAFER. 

(Knickerbocker Magazine, July, 1835.) 

I have wept for the death of the late Benja- 
min Smith until I can weep no more, and I have 
come to the conclusion to vent the superfiux of 
my grief in ink-drops. Ben. was a metropolitan 
loafer, and a phenomenon. He was the ruling 
luminary of a whole shoal of shag-tailed comets 
that used to shoot madly about the terrestrial 
firmament of New York. He was not a New 
Yorker, though born, bred, and reared in this 
town. He had a spirit beyond and above it. I 
sometimes conjectured that he was stolen in 
his infancy from Thomson's " Castle of Indo- 
lence/' or that he was merely a transient visiter 
from Rabelais' island, where industrious slug- 
gards are paid sixpence ha'penny a day for 
hard sleeping. As a faithful historian, how- 
ever, I am compelled to state, that my hero did 
actually come into the world by the connivance 
of Susan and Samuel Smith, loafer and loafress 
of this burgh— not exactly under a favorable 
planet — but with the auspicious light of a 
brown, sputtering tallow candle. 

His education was not collegiate or academi- 
cal. It was obtained, most of it, in the open 
air, without the superfluous expense of books, 
ferules, or schoolmasters. In truth, he con- 
sidered flagellation as a serious hinderance to 
the circulation of the intellectual fluids. He 
could not believe that it constituted an essential 
element in education ; and he often averred, in 
proof of his position, that he was acquainted 
with a cart-horse that had been belabored all 
his life-time, and yet was as ignorant as an ass 
to this day ! Ben., however, had a diploma to 
show, written on sheepskin, in lesible charac- 
ters, and signed by competent authority. He 
offered one day to produce it, before me, by 
stripping his jacket. I excused him. 

Young Benjamin Smith — like all remarkable 
20 



young men — had original views of this world. 
He considered it, in the first place, as a large 
dormitory, or bedroom ; in the second place, as 
a stupenduous cook-shop ; and, in the third, as 
an unbounded loafing-ground. And these views 
would he defend with the pertinacity of a con- 
gressman. Ask him why the wharves and pier- 
heads were constructed ? " Fine places to 
stretch in the sun !" was his answer. " Why 
was the court of sessions established by the 
legislature ?" " To help and further sleep- 
ing." " Why ministers ordained and consecrat- 
ed ?" " To encourage somnolence." " Why 
the corporation opened fair streets, laid side- 
walks, labelled the corners ?" " To point out 
the shortest cut to the best loafing-grounds." 

On ordinary occasions Smith was pedestrian, 
but sometimes he could prevail on a crony in 
the next grade of life above himself, to give him 
an airing to Harlaem. These were his gala 
days — the real holydays of his heart. " Fare- 
well ! ye foot-pad loafers," he would exclaim, 
as he mounted the vehicle, " trudge on — trudge 
on, and wear out your shoes ! I am Christian 
henceforth, and believe in Providence, in that 
he has created horses !" Truly, he was a 
great man in his tours to Harlaem, Kingsbridge, 
and parts adjacent. He would sit in his friend's 
carriage, on a cross-board (for his charioteer 
was generally a friendly Irishman, on a journey 
for a load of dirt), and bracing his feet with a 
most determined air, would grasp the reins with 
a fierceness, and draw in his ghost of a steed 
with a nerve that often produced an electric 
titter from the lookers-on. He was irresistible. 

Smith was fond of music, and whistled every 
other mile all the way. He took much pride in 
this accomplishment, which he had almost cul- 
tivated into a fine art by his assiduity. He 
had carried it to such a pitch of perfection, 
that he very often whistled for his dinner. He 
told me when I last saw him, that he had been 
trying his mouth on a piece of sentimental 
music, and that it needed only one quaver and 
a bar to make it complete. Alas, poor Ben. ! 
He is now gone. He fell the victim of an at- 
tempt to whistle a dull senator's speech in Con- 
gress. He was heard late at night, rehearsing ; 
the next morning he was found lying on his 
back, with his mouth wide agape, and drawn 
askew by the violence of the attempt. The 
result of the crowner's 'quest was, that the 
deceased came to his death by a long sentence 
in Senator 's last harangue. 



I have forgotten thus far— an omission al- 
most unpardonable in a small novelist— to 
sketch the person and habiliments of my hero. 
I will "about it straight.* 1 

Benjamin Smith, then, was a tall loafer, sur- 
mounted with a well-woven and well-entanvled 
mat of hair, that proved dame nature no in- 
different hatter. His frame was a bundle of 
i straight pipe-stem bones, wired I 



310 



MISCELLANIES. 



er with small ligaments, and swinging easily in 
their sockets, to and fro, as he shuffled through 
the street. He was tall, nay, gigantic, in an 
upward direction ; a peculiarity from which he 
drew the ingenious inference that if angels 
ever came from above (and here he would look 
reverently up), he believed about their nighest 
landing place would be his head ! This pro- 
cerity, with his stationary habits, would have 
rendered his crown a grand building spot for a 
crow's nest, or the little Parnassus of a flock of 
singing birds. He would have sold the fee- 
simple for a gin sling, and have never harmed 
an occupant in the world. 

How shall I describe his dress ? 'Tis like 
drawing a note for a thousand dollars, with an 
empty pocket to meet it. Alas! he had no 
dress ; nothing that could be considered a broad- 
cloth synonym for the word — nothing that a 
tailor would have dignified with the name. 
The very alms-house pensioners would have 
laughed at his variegated coat and unmention- 
ables. They were patches of color, and shreds 
of nothing; the very ghosts of defunct habili- 
ments ; indigo blue at the bottom, and red at 
the top, the intervals interspersed with an as- 
sortment of shades. He was a walking rain- 
bow, and an observer might have thought that 
he had eyes in every inch of his body, from the 
spots of flesh that peeped forth from the irregu- 
lar casements of his " looped and windowed rag- 
gedness." In the event of a war, in his time, 
he would have been a fine mark for small shot. 

Possessing these inimitable graces of person 
and pantaloon — together with a large amount 
of intellect, to which I have not alluded, on the 
supposition that the shrewd reader would take 
it for granted — I was surprised, and often ex- 
pressed such surprise to the surviving friends 
of Smith, that he never was sent to the legis- 
lature ; for he was one of our distinguished 
"high-binders," and deserved promotion and a 
good office. And from the exhibition of cer- 
tain gushes of genius, I am confident he would 
not have spent a winter at the capitol, without 
learning the difference between steam and 
botany, and that coal-heaving and legislation 
are two distinct departments of knowledge. 



What was life to Ben Smith ? A mere farce, 
during which pea-nuts might be munched, a 
nap taken, and a little laughter indulged. Some 
might have doubted whether he had a soul, or 
if any, a proper-sized one. Such cavillers should 
consider that the accommodations for that ethe- 
real essence were not ample. There is a test 
that brings out one's soul as easily and certain- 
ly as the knuckle elicits a spark from the Ley- 
den jar, a small and inevitable event (for like 
death, it comes sooner or later to all), that 
shakes up and jostles out a man's spirit into 
broad daylight, like a cork from a bottle, or a 
bird from its nest. He loved. He rehearsed 
his little two act pathetic comedy (for love 



is made up of laughter and tears), in such by- 
corners and strange places as poverty affords. 

To him and his beloved, garrets must needs 
be drawing-rooms, and public streets parlors. 
Cupid furnished no perfumery or purple hang- 
ings for my hero and his enamorata. The 
courtship commenced in an alley, where the 
lover saw his " fond one" bearing a basket of 
cold victuals to a blind aunt. The attitude 
was romantic, and the heart can not be always 
on its guard. Subsequent interviews were had 
at the pump. She stole slyly into his bosom, 
and left her little miniature on his heart. It 
was better framed than if in gold, and more 
wisely; for those who have golden miniatures 
of their mistresses, are apt to love gold better 
than their mistress. Smith's chosen was a 
small, dark-eyed girl, with a neck of snow, and 
black tresses that lay upon it in happy contrast. 
Her step was light and elastic, and her voice 
bird-like, though uncultivated. 

I will not insult humble love, by describing 
her weather-worn and use- worn garments. 
She was clothed in feeling, home-spun, indeed, 
but heart-spun, as well, and worth all your 
silks and jewels. They were wedded. It was 
the very night before his melancholy demise, 
which I would fain think I have drawn with a 
just remembrance of his virtues. Poor girl ! 
She knew not that death's high- constable was 
so near, and so soon to serve his warrant. She 
would gladly have put in bail, but it was not 
permitted her. Let me not open the vial of her 
sorrows afresh. She is yet living, lowly, and 
disconsolate. 

A word touching the funeral of the departed. 
His demise, for he was a royal ragamuffin, 
spread universal sorrow through all ranks of 
the loafer community. The very beggars' dogs 
seemed to be afflicted and cast down, as if they 
had lost a father. The hour of his burial was 
fixed at four o'clock, P. M., on the day of his 
death, in order that his gentlemen cronies might 
be allowed good time to arise from bed, and 
that they might return from the ceremony late 
enough for a fashionable dinner. Supported 
by two sturdy associates, his mortal remains 
were escorted to a snug corner of Potter's 
Field — the true Westminster Abbey of New 
York paupers. No clergyman was present to 
administer the rites of sepulture. A brother 
loafer officiated, but not like an ordinary func- 
tionary. With his companions, he had inspired 
himself with tears at a neighboring temple of 
spirits, and instead of the cold, stereotyped 
tones of official sorrow, he gave out (in the 
moving melting accents of poetical pauperized 
pity), verse by verse, as is the manner in 
methodist chapels, a "talented" requiem, of 
which the following stanzas were all that I was 
enabled to remember : 

" Toll, toll the watch-house bell, 
Sound loud the sad conch-shell, 

For Ben. is gone ! 
He did no harm,— all's well ; 
A-whisthng brave he fell, — 

Has loafing's done ! 



AN ARGUMENT AGAINST CLOTHING. 



311 



" Weep docks, wharves, cotton-bags ? 
Ben greets no more with rags 
Your honored beds ; 
A little here he lagged 
Then to his heaven Ben jagged, 

And dropped his shreds 1" 

Let me add one word of eulogy in prose. 
Ben was no gentleman, for he had never pulled 
an y man's nose nor fought a duel ; no Christian, 
for he never sung psalms loudly in church, nor 
disturbed a whole congregation with the osten- 
tatious clink of his silver in the plate ; no mer- 
chant, for he was totally ignorant of that finest 
of fine arts, the art of splitting one sixpence 
into two ; no philanthropist, for he was not a 
member of the society for the promotion of self- 
righteousness ; and no politician, for he had 
two eyes. Neither was he a learned man, for 
he could eat pudding without knowing how it 
was compounded. He was simply what I 
have set forth, " The late Benjamin Smith, 
Loafer." 



A SERIOUS ARGUMENT 

AGAINST THE USE OE CLOTHING : ADDRESSED 
TO TAILORS. 

{Knickerbocker Magazine, Nov., 1836.) 

" Some were for the utter extirpation 
Of linsey-woolsey in the nation." — Hudibras. 

I trust I shall not be suspected of the pur- 
pose, in this paper, of putting an insult upon 
the respectable fraternity to whom it is ad- 
dressed. On the contrary, I have hopes, built 
upon the justice of my object and the purity of 
my wishes, to win them over to the view I in- 
tend to take, and to convince them that a re- 
fined and nice moral sense, as well as a lofty 
and philosophical comprehension of the fitness 
of things, requires at their hands an immediate 
abandonment of the profession in which they 
are at present engaged. I trust to be able to 
prove to them that it is their duty to break in 
pieces their lapboards, take down their signs, 
give their iron geese the wing, and bid a long 
farewell to skein and needle. 

Beside the urgent necessity resting upon 
them of restoring themselves, physically, to that 
erect posture from which they have fallen, I 
shall bring before them reasons more purely 
addressed to their understanding. 

It is clear, then, in the first place, that tail- 
ors came in with the fall. Adam, in his prim- 
itive condition, ennobled by the complete de- 
velopment of every power of the mind and nerve 
of the body — a profounder philosopher than Ba- 
con — superior (in all probability) in imagina- 
tion to Shakspere — as a musician, sweeter than 
Mozart, and, in fact, as a universal handi- 
craftsman, to all the world since — Adam — what 
was the secret, or, at least, the development 
of all his power ? He went undressed ! If 
I may so speak, without irreverence to the 



founder of our family, he was the Great Shirt- 
less. 

His descendants degenerated. They were 
trowsered and coated. And this was the first 
sad symptom of the fall. Had not pantaloons 
been introduced, there had been hope for man. 
The downfall was not complete — the destruc- 
tion was not irremediable — the last chain was 
not irrevocably bound upon us — till Adam drew 
on his first pair of indispensables. Of immor- 
ality 

"the primitive tradition reaches 

As far as Adam's first green breeches." 

In making up the account of our depravity, we 
must halt here. Farther backward we can not 
journey. 

Adam, before this, might have perpetrated 
the indecency of talking Dutch in the Garden ; 
but we have no records — no authentic history 
of that absurdity. We begin with the surmount- 
ing of the articles set forth in the couplet. 

He drew them on, not like a modern juvenile, 
with exultant eyes and eager limbs (though 
they were his first suit), but with sorrowing and 
tears. Through the two narrow vistas down 
which his legs descended, as through the tubes 
of a telescope, he saw the degradation of his 
race. Bloody- visaged war and hypocritic peace, 
pestilence and famine, disease and death, peer- 
ed at him through those twin openings. 

Oh ! had that fatal suit never been donned, 
how glorious a spectacle would this our world 
present ! It would have swarmed with tall and 
pure intelligences " only less than the angels." 
But mark the consequences ! Cain becomes a 
butcher, and Abel a huckster — afterward, the 
first a vagabond, the second a carcass. 

Such were the disgraces which the first cloth- 
ing put upon our humanity. Every age, since the 
ejectment of our first parent from his territories, 
has seen their renewal. If man had remained to 
this hour unclothed and unshirted, he had been 
still pure and happy. But misery and dress go to- 
gether — they are natural yokefellows. Whenev- 
er I see a pair of breeches I think of original sin, 
and smallclothes remind me of total depravity. 
A frock-coat is to me the exponent of damnation, 
and a tight-bodied one the sign and token of 
eternal torture. 

Is it not our duty, then, to put away from us 
these mementoes of our shame ? to cast to the 
winds these daily slaves of Philip, whose ever 
business it is to babble in our ears, " Thou 
must die !" Shall we endure these provocative 
monitors ? shall we put up with these woollen 
impertinences ? — manufactured disturbers of 
peace ? — these hangers-on ? 

I think not. Better visions dawn upon me. 
I see the Naked Aire approaching. I sec the 
time when tailors' bills shall be no more, or be- 
come mere matters of history — remembered, 
only to be classed with the witches and goblins 
which affrighted our ancestors. 

The argument against clothing assumes, if 

possible, a still more serious aspect, w! 
aniined in its connexion with the dignity of man. 



312 



MISCELLANIES. 



It must be confessed, that all objects are pure, j 
in proportion as they are free from contingents , 
and adjuncts. The diamond only when clean- j 
ed from its imbedding earth exhibits its full 
lustre, and the pearl shines not forth in its 
clear, native whiteness, till disinterred from the 
coffining oyster. Sir Isaac Newton was of 
opinion that the only sorts of chaste matter on 
earth were certain fine particles, or impene- 
trable finite atoms, and that all other matter 
was a mere mongrel. He considered the pure 
existence of atoms to be in a state of undress. 
I agree with the venerable author of the pippin 
(sometimes called the gravitating) philosophy. 
Man is among the corruptible — the adulterated 
— the impure. 

There is something to me ludicrous in the 
very physical structure of man. He ti a 
" forked radish.*' It always seemed to me some 
strange error or accident in his formation, that 
he was divided and cleft at the bottom. It 
would better fulfil my notions of symmetry, if I 
he were fashioned column-like and progressed 
with one leg. By having two, it would seem as . 
if, in some convulsion of nature he had split up. , 

My notions of a perfect being, gentle reader 
— to let thee a little into some new mysteries — 
is (abandoning the columnar doctrine), as a 
shapeless and invisible cloud, containing in it- 1 
self the power of motion, and floating about, : 
guided by mere impulse. I would have it pos- 
sess a full source of harmony, and capable of j 
breathing music and sweet sounds at will. It 
should journey to and fro, in company with the 
seasons ; it should rest under the shadow of a ' 
mountain in Greece, and melt into crimson and 
golden hues in our own far west. Sometimes : 
it should glide noiselessly amid the flowers, the 
rare and pleasant flowers of England, or over 
the famed war-fields of old Erance. It should ] 
possess the perfect power of metempsychosis 
or transition ; at one time it might cool, far up 
in the ether, into all the delicious freshness of 
snow, and at another dissolve in all the sweet 
summer tenderness of rain. 

But mark me ; it should be no common cloud, 
this perfect creature, this paragon, this phoenix : 
of mine. It should bear about in the heavens 
no semblance of garments. It should figure 



forth to the clown or the school-boy's brain no 
rude monster bedighted in fantastical apparel ; 
no celestial Dutchmen ; no well -breeched har- 
lequin; no valorous chieftains, with black 
cocked hats, made of wind, with swords of va- 
por. No ; but there, pillowed on the air, my 
human cloud, my immortal fragment of ether, 
my animate and beautiful substitute for man, 
should sit and become intellectual with thought. 

" Beautiful cloud ! I would I were with thee, 
In thy calm way o'er land and sea ; 
To rest on thy unrolling skirts and look 
On earth as on an open book '." 

By looking at your next neighbor, you will 
soon see that he is no such thing as my perfect 
and symmetrical being. You will not only see 
that he is a little toy, moulded of clay, but that 



he is also tricked out in that inhuman absurdit 
styled dress. Erom the chin to the heels, he 
a tailors ape. What an abasement ! — how d( 
perate a degradation ! 

Man, it seems, can not be man without tl 
pitiful adjunct; he is a tree that blooms n( 
without this foliage. And yet it irks him; it 
it is a bondage to him, to be cased up thi 
within wooden walls. His soul lives in a doubl 
prison ; it is egg within egg ; first a shell of 
clay, and next an outer covering upon that of 
cloth. How is it possible for orators 
divines to reach this doubly-defended nucleus 
Can a refined sentiment make its way throuj 
broadcloth ? or will a pointed thought, or fierc 
denunciation pierce the solidity of a Petersham 

Man goeth about bearing his own shame as 
burden upon his back ; and yet he aspires 
mate with the angels. Think you they stoop 
these appendages ? That they walk the heaver 
ly avenues, cultivating the cock of a hat, 
staking the happiness of their immortal nature 
on the roll of a collar ? No : the higher 
ascend the scale of intelligence, the less do 
find of this vain incumbrance. 

Even the brute has a lesson for us here. The 
horse — does he wear aught over his leather 
jerkin ? And have I not seen Sir Goat str 
forth with only his mohair cloak cast over 
shoulder, with much of native and dignifie 
simplicity ? 

Let us sift our notions nicely, then, and wit 
candor, and we shall speedily learn that we 
have an instinct within us which preachet 
against clothing, at least against the moder 
modification of that vileness. 

Perhaps we may conceive, with some sho^ 
of reason, of Alcibiades promenading 01 
Broadway with a cane and whiskers, or tl 
Emperor Otho arranging his curls in faulfh 
mirrors ; but what say you, reader, to Socrate 
in the Portico philosophizing in a round-about I 
or Cicero walking the Forum (forecasting 
oration against Catiline) in a pair of tor. 
boots ? or Plato in nankeens ? or Pythagors 
in a swallow-tail ? Hercules in small-clothes 
or Homer (pauper though he was) in a dicky 

It is beyond you — is it not ? 

Post Scriptum. — When I had laid the 
timbers, as it were of the above essay, I met 
tioned my views (such as I expected to set fort! 
and have set forth here), to a bosom friend 
mine, confidentially. I think he must, in soi 
failing moment, have broken his trust. It aj 
pears the tailors have " got wind" of the fortl 
coming argument, and are beginning to 
steps to prevent the dissemination of its d< 
trines. The following I take from an eveni 
paper : 

"Notice.— To Tailoss.— The tailors of the city < 
New York are respectfully invited to attend a meet' 
of the trade to be held at Jefferson House, on Mond 
evening next, when business of importance viM be laid i 
fore them." 

The mark at which this points is Dalpal 



SOLOMON QUIGG; EX-MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 



313 



I am farther corroborated in the belief that 
some movement is on foot among the Thimbles, 
from the circumstance that when the other day 
I was taking my customary afternoon's walk. I 
was met by a tailors journeyman, who. in the 
usual hobbling style, was hurrying home with 
a coat on his left arm. As I passed him, the 
fellow, who by some mode or other had become 
acquainted with my person, put his unemployed 
hand into his 'hind pocket, and shook out his 
coat-tail deliberately in my face ! 



SOLOMON QUIGG; EX-MEMBER OF 
COXGRZ 

(Knickerbocker Magazine, jfyril, 1837.) 

Ox the second step cf a " stoop*' in Broad- 
way, sat Quigg — Solomon Quigg, ex-member 
of the nineteenth congress of the Crated 
States — casting about in his mind, like a melan- 
choly heron, the means and devices for procur- 
ing a breakfast. While his large person ex- 
panded over the solid bench whereon he sat, 
his ponderous chin rested on one hand, and the 
other reposed in his breeches pocket ; his eyes, 
meantime, travelling here and there, as it* in 
search of something to silence the voice of 
hunger. 

His dress was a congress of absurdities — a 
pie-bald court, to which every tailor's shop in 
the city seemed to have sent its representative. 
While one leg cf his blue pantaloons draggled 
on the ground, the other, apparently of a more 
aspirin? disposition, mounted to the very knee. 
Half his coat was of a mixed gray, while 
the other moiety was of a lively crimson. 
His vest, originally the gift of a strolling play- 
er — whom Quigg had once patronised at 
Washington — had been so often remodelled 
and amended, that, like the constitution of a 
small debating society, scarce a shred of the 
original articles remained. The countenance 
of Quigg had certainly been once expressive ; 
now, the only feature which retained a claim to 
that appellative, was a bulbous nose, which 
stood out from his face like the boom of a ves- 
sel, with a light run out at its extremity ; a bea- 
con of warning to all those who sail the sea of 
wine, lest one day when they dream not, ship- 
wreck may befall them. The mouth, which 
had doubtless in days past been bearded with 
scorn, and stiff with haughty feeling, now hung 
loose and agape, like an old lady's worn-out 
purse. On the summit of his head rested an 
ancient, bell-shaped hat, the crown of which 
had partly given way, and lifted up and down, 
like the lid of a pipkin, with every passing gust 
of wind. It seemed to be a convenience, by 
which the wearer's more devout thoughts might \ 
find a shorter road to heaven. 

At times as Quigg sat thu.«, with an elbow 
on his knee, a tear, despite a certain effort at 
8elf-control, would steal from the corner of his 



- I resting for m mwit on a crow-foot 
wrinkle underneath it, ran down his cheek be- 
side, just so as to escape his mouth, orer bis 
chin, and fail to the ground. 

His aspect expressed, to me at least, a certain 
regret for the past, and doubt of the future. 
Quigg the congressman was now but a ragged 
gentleman — a loafer. As he sat upon that cold 
stone, weeping in tatters, he was, unconscious- 
ly, the representative of a constituency larger 
than his original political one of that 

vast body known as decayed politicians — a red- 
faced, tavern-haunting tribe : fishes who live 
in an ocean of liquor, and yet are always 
athirst : the cast-off leaders of parties ; dema- 
gogues out of favor ; office-holders thrust into 
that direst Erebus— oat-cf -office. The cushion 
of state Quigg had exchanged for a more sub- 
stantial bench in the open sunshine. No long- 
er a 5 errant of the people, he was the lacquey 
of his own sweet will. Abandoning the dress- 
circle of fashionable life, where he had once 
revolved a special planet, he looked upon it 
from an humble corner in the pit. And yet 
hunger was not so easily to be got over. It is 
a creditor who takes up its mansion within our- 
and devours our very seat of lite, till it 
be paid the uttermost farthing. Quigg was in 
a perplexity. 



The room into which Solomon Qui-- 
ushered that night — when he had passed 
triumphantly through the Marengo, the J-. 
litz, and the Waterloo of the day — breakfast, 
dinner, and supper — was an upper chamber of 
an old tavern in the second ward of our me- 
tropolis. The tavern had once been the head- 
quarters of a dominant political party. At a 
glance, Quigg read its history. On one side, 
the remnant of candle which he held in his 
hand gleamed on the dusty fragment of a dag 
which had erst waved proudly, illumined with 
the national stars and stripes. This was roilet 1 
up, and on it. as a pillow. Quigg laid his un- 
kempt head. Near his right hand, on the door, 
reposed a broken riddle, which had once given 
forth cheering music to the freemen of the 
second ward. Against the instrument, reclined 
the relics of a tin-pan, hall" through the bottom 
of which was thrust a mouldering drum-stick, 
which in its better days had summoned from the 
cold metal sounds that stirred many a 
bosom, and rilled many an urchin heart with 
keen delight. In diderent corners of the 
humble attic, hung from pegs and nails, flags, 
banners, ensigns, and devices of a thousand 
kinds, setting forth, in monstrous capitals the 
virtues and qualifications of favorite candidates. 

But — and this struck the somnolent eyes of 
with most force — on the corner of one 
of the tattered banners were the figures 
the very year in which Quigg himself had been 
elected, after a fierce strugglt . rican 

Congress. As he stretched himi>elf for sleep, 
his hand by some mischance, struck against a 



314 



MISCELLANIES. 



modest pine box, which stood perched just over 
his head ; it came to the floor, and from its 
bowels rolled forth a heap of dusty papers, 
folded like doctors' prescriptions. He seized 
one of them, and on it found : 



For Congress. 
SOLOMON QUIGG. 



Here was a theme for thought. Quigg now 
lay, as it were, before a wizard glass, over 
which passed in gloomy procession the achieve- 
ments, the glories, and the triumphs, of his 
past life. In contrast with that bright lang- 
syne, he felt the double bitterness of his pres- 
ent condition. His soul began to stir afresh, 
and to feel the throbbings of a revived ambition. 
A thousand plans and enterprises crowded his 
brain, and all that night he lay restless ; medi- 
tating high schemes, and devising new ladders, 
in this his Jacob's vision, by which to reach 
the heaven of his desire. Quigg was once 
more an ambitious man. 



On the bosom of the East river, cabled to 
the wharf, floated a light sloop, with its deck 
carefully scrubbed down, and its red flag float- 
ing gayly in the wind. Gently upon the water 
lay its cool image. From its anchorage to the 
wharf its tall mast reached, and tipped with 
its wavy shadow the countenance of a quiet 
idler, whose head rested on a decayed pile, 
while his feet hung carelessly over the wharf's 
end. On board the graceful vessel, extended 
flounderwise, with his twinkling eyes peering 
at the water over the sloop's stern, was stretched 
Solomon Quigg. A group of blue-fish had gath- 
ered just before him. Perhaps they expected a 
congressional effort. Ever and anon, Quigg 
would cast an eye toward the shore, as if 
in momentary expectation of the arrival of 
some personage or the turning-up of some 
matter of importance. About the time when 
the guard on board a man-of-war's man, which 
lay anchored in the middle of the stream, had 
sounded the three o'clock bell, a group of vag- 
abond and listless persons began to gather be- 
fore the vessel on whose deck Quigg reposed. 
Rapidly, dozen by dozen, their numbers in- 
creased. Every moment the collection became 
more extended and more motley. Stevedores, 
wharfingers, a stray customhouse officer — old 
gentlemen who had come to the neighboring 
market for fish — all aided in completing the 
human assortment. 

Precisely at five, Quigg arose from his recum- 
bent posture, ascended the rigging to the main- 
top, there took his stand, turned toward his au- 
ditory, took off his bell-shaped hat, cast it on 
the deck, and made a low and solemn bow, 
which was received by the vast congregation 



with nine cheers. He then addressed them in 
a short speech, something in his old style of 
eloquence. 

He could not resist the temptation of so high 
a pulpit. It was better, in that respect, than 
the floor of the house ; it gave him a more com- 
manding view of his audience. He closed his 
harangue with a touching allusion to the diffi- 
culty of obtaining a subsistence, and the brev- 
ity of life — and leaped ! Through the air, like 
an arrow, Quigg descended to the water. His 
head cleaved its glassy surface ; the lookers-on 
beheld his descending form, as, for an instant, 
his white feet glimmered above the river and 
then disappeared. Five minutes elapsed, and 
Quigg arose not. The crowd thought this a 
special feat, and gave three cheers. Five min- 
utes more passed, and yet Quigg reascended not 
to the light. The feat was miraculous ; the 
assemblage burst into three cheers again, heart- 
ier and more protracted than ever. A few philos- 
ophers among the audience began now to doubt 
the reappearance of the aquatic diver — the per- 
formance was too good to be fictitious. Anoth- 
er five minutes elapsed ; an idle friend of 
Quigg's stepped out from the rabble and began 
to whimper. 



The sun went down, and Solomon Quigg 
arose not. He had made his last dive. The 
river was searched, but no mortal relic discov- 
ered. In the soft river-mud he had found a 
ready coffin. In its liquid embraces slept for 
ever the person of Solomon Quigg, ex-member of 
the nineteenth congress of the United States. 



THE UBIQUITOUS NEGRO. 

(Jtmerican Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1838.) 

I have noticed, any time these last ten years, 
a singular-looking creature — some would call 
him goblin — prowling about the purlieus of 
Theatre alley. This is his place of most fre- 
quent resort, but by no means his only one. In 
this region he has established his ordinary dom- 
icil. In the dark hall that stretches in the rear 
of the Park theatre he stalks most at home, in 
a sort of grim, epic grandeur, as if he held that 
region as his own. Bell's printing office, or 
some kindred place in the neighborhood, is his 
castle, the rest of New York his parks and 
pleasure-grounds. This very negro seems to 
be ubiquitous. Go whithersoever you will, 
Rumbout is there. He mingles with every fes- 
tivity, and makes himself an element in every 
kind of business or pleasure that goes on in 
this great city. Carry yourself with the utmost 
speed to any part of the metropolis, there, in 
some shape or other, will turn up this African 
Ubiquity. Stroll, ride, fish, walk, sail, he pre- 
sents himself as naturally, and in as good keep- 



THE UBIQUITOUS NEGRO. 



315 



ing with the scenery you may be amid as the sky 
itself, or the grass, the water, or the pavement. 

You are in Castle garden to see the bal- 
loon ascend ; there is a vast crowd, innumera- 
ble faces, colors of dress, shapes of hat, canes, 
children, dogs, &c. ; and yet you feel that the 
group is not complete, and that something is 
wanting to the perfect success of the aeronaut ; 
and, just as he is about to slip himself loose 
from the earth, your unsatisfied eye falls on 
Rumbout, tugging at one of the cords, with his 
hands entangled, on the eve of ascending as a 
sort of unwilling plummet at the end of the 
rope to steady the air-ship. A happy voyage to 
thee, Rumbout ; and be not the fate of Cocking 
thine ! 

Again, you are at the Parade ground, in the 
extreme northern quarter of the city. Before 
you flash the gaudy coats, gay plumes, glitter- 
ing sabres of officers and privates ; the mimic 
machinery of battle moves with admirable pre- 
cision in admirable time. A certain solemnity 
hangs like a cloud over the place, as it might in 
actual engagement, when Death rides out on 
his white horse, distributing his darts on either 
side. Suddenly a mirthful roar shakes the field. 
You thrust through to learn the cause, and be- 
hold ! the omnipresent Runabout's arms dexter- 
ously pinioned together behind by the bayonet 
of the guard. He looks like a roasted fowl 
brought to the table with his arms reversed. 
He had attempted, with his naturally eager and 
inquisitive spirit, to get a nearer insight into 
the mysteries of warfare, and this is the result. 

Chatham square is a singular locality — "a 
most ancient and fishlike" place. Any time in 
the day before two in the afternoon, you will 
see there as motley crowds as may be brought 
together in Christendom. As every one knows, 
it is the vendue of infirm furniture, disabled 
chairs, superannuated stoves, decayed bed- 
steads, neckless bottles, pots without legs, 
frameless looking-giasses, shirts without own- 
ers, owners wichout shirts. Finer voices, in 
some of the ordinary keys, you will nowhere 
find than belong to the eloquent auctioneers of 
the square. There is one, I know, hath the 
voice of a clarion ; it stirs the spirit to its very 
depths, and is like a sudden call to battle. In 
a clear noon, when the wind is laid and he lifts 
it up : " How much ! gentlemen, how much ! 
how much for this small piece of spotted cali- 
co ; gentlemen and ladies, how much !" the 
neighboring buildings shake to their base with 
the sound, the hackmen pause and listen ; Cath- 
arine street, with its living tides, is silent, and 
the cartmen are astounded in their frocks. If 
there is any spare coin lurking in any secret 
corner of the pocket of any human being with- 
in reach of his lungs, it will be tolled from its 
" hidden residence" by this magician's spell. 
And among the buyers there is at times a voice 
to be heard scarcely inferior to his. A watch 
is up for sale ; or, rather, I should say, that 
which was the coffin once of the living works, 
the vital parts of a chronometer ; a huge, mon- 



strous, unformed shape of metal. Whether tin 
or silver be the main ingredient in its composi- 
tion, is not to be decided rashly. A sweet, flu- 
ent voice in the throng, however, assumes the 
decision ; " Threepence per pound without the 
works, three and a half with !" It is the bu- 
gle voice of our friend Rumbout. 

I have been out in many snowstorms, and 
always met Rumbout running hither and thith- 
er, half bent, with his hands in his pocket or a 
snow-shovel on his shoulder, looking for a 
" small job." It always excites odd feelings 
in me to see a negro in a snowstorm. Innu- 
merable strange and jostling contrasts bustle 
into my brain, and make themselves busy in 
framing a many-colored web of humorous asso- 
ciation. The absurdity is so bold between the 
pitch-black animalculae moving about on the 
surface, and the white masses piling themselves 
around him on every side, and pressing upon 
him from above ; as if the heavens would 
smother him to death with his opposite — a hor- 
rid mummy, wrapped in winding-sheet wide 
as creation. Foul blot on the page of nature. 
Death's-head in the midst of gay bells and mer- 
ry shows. Black swan on the clear stream of 
Sterchio, dimming its pellucid waters. Goblin, 
dungeon-intruder into the heaps of half-molten 
silver (as are these brilliant snowheaps), steal- 
ing upon them like a dark-visaged thief flushed 
with the hope of plunder. It seems as if the 
earth should gape and swallow up this incon- 
sistency — this living foe to her fairness and 
whiteness ; yet Rumbout hobbles along, know- 
ing and dreaming none of these things. My 
vein in this sketch is episode on episode. 

I love, in a clear summer afternoon, to glide 
up the East river in a light boat, and, dropping 
anchor near the classic regions of Hurlgate, 
partake the pleasant and contemplative joys of 
angling. Many such sunny hours have I spent, 
leaning over the boat's side, pretending to be 
on the watch for the finny prey, but, in truth, 
deep in a meditation on some bygone scene, or 
building up fairy palaces from the ooze below, 
and peopling them with fishlike nymphs, in 
half dresses — water-colored silks — with pretty 
round faces, and a train to their garments as 
long as a queen's. And every time that I have 
thus occupied my fancy, about the middle of 
my revery I have heard the careful dash of an 
oar, the gentle dropping of a line in water, and 
looking up, have immediately beheld — Rum- 
bout the ubiquitous. 

He is never out of place. In crowds, look 
for Rumbout. Of processions, shows, wassail- 
ings, riots (in an innocent way), feastings, fast- 
ings, mobs, multitudes, he is a natural constit- 
uent. He has a face that becomes all these 
things, and, like the painter who wrought a 
hand, in which he was skilful, prominently in- 
to all his pictures, so Rumbout works in his 
picturesque visnomy upon the ground of these 
numberless exhibitions and diversions. I doubt 
much whether a street-organ ever sounded in 
our goodly city out of hearing of Rumbout. He 



316 



MISCELLANIES. 



listens afar off, and soon hies to the spot. No 
band of musicians ever played in our thorough- 
fares if Kumbout were missing. He is the 
man that forms friendships with the drummer's 
boy, and takes liberties with the third flute- 
player ! It is he that asked the captain of the 
Flying guards, "how much he paid a yard for 
the flannel in his coat V — meaning his red uni- 
form. No presence, however imposing — no 
uthority, however grave or dignified, can 
awe down the spirit of the immortal negro. He 
has bearded the recorder in two petty larceny 
suits ; and has threatened Mr. Hays (the an- 
cient Hays) with a drubbing ! Omnipresent, 
Runabout seems also to be immortal. He has 
been called " Old Rumbout," I have been in- 
formed, since the year 1800. He is " Apollo — 
ever young." He has never looked younger 
than at present ; he will never look older. The 
principles of life and youth seem to be rooted 
down deep in the constitution of Rumbout. 



These plants seem to flourish best in that rich, 
black mould. Time can not pluck them up. He 
appears to have known but one season of life. 
Surly winter, sad autumn, capricious spring, 
have not visited him. 

He is an incarnation and creature of the 
golden summer ; gay with lowering clouds that 
seem more than they mean, prodigal, content, 
with fruit and blossom mingled ; for Rumbout 
has never seen want yet. Like the great sun, 
in his favored season that we have spoken of, 
he works leisurely, making a long circuit in his 
labors — slowly, pleasantly, from the morning 
to the eve. I think Rumbout was educated a 
rag-gatherer. He goes through his vocation 
more as if it were an elegant recreation than a 
gainful mode of life. To appropriate the lan- 
guage of the studio, there is a delicacy in his 
touch, a mellowness and freedom in his style of 
handling, and a picturesqueness in his grouping, 
that render Rumbout the Raphael of his craft. 



END OF MISCELLANIES. 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



[Eighteen numbers of Arcturus — the monthly 
magazine from which these selections are made — 
were published in 1840, '1, '2, under the direction of 
the present author and Mr. Evert A. Duyckinck. 
The author avails himself of this — the earliest op- 
portunity that has offered — to acknowledge the ad- 
vantage its conduct derived from the genial and 
graceful pen of this gentleman, suited so well to 
shed through the pages of a periodical a kindly 
light, and to make each corner glow with a senti- 
ment dropped fresh from a fancy well-instructed. 

Other and acceptable aid was furnished in various 
essays by Mr. William A. Jones, truthful, acute, 
and vigorous, and equal, in the writer's humble 
judgment, to the best of their kind, at that time 
published in the United States. With Mr. Auld 
(little, but worthy to be greatly, known), unrolling 
month by month, an old, quaint tapestry, wrought 
with figures Rabelaisian and devices of the age of 
Secundus ; and Mr. J. M. Vancott, a rising man 
at the bar of New York, coming in at the close, in 
a compact and well-ordered argument, the author 
would have left — as these were the mainstays and 
props of the undertaking — but few tributes to pay. 
Others stole upon its pages by degrees, in no unac- 
ceptable whisperings or utterances, but these were 
its key-notes, heard oftenest and not ungratefully 
by its readers. Their services were at least suc- 
cessful — it is well known — in awakening an answer 
to their thoughts in many places, and in calling 
forth the favor of the general press of the country.] 

July 15, 1843. 



POLITICAL LIFE. 

The American is called to play his part, 
whether it be cast in the higher or lower 
walks of life, amid many novelties of incident, 
situation, and emotion. It is true that as far 
as costume and many of the lesser appliances 
of character are concerned, he adjusts himself 
in an antique mirror, and is guided in the mere 
language of his part by the prompting-book of 
fashions and habits long in use and borrowed 
from abroad. At a distance he hears the con- 
flict of many kingdoms — the tumult of great 
masses of men striving together in ancient com- 
binations, and around him lie the wrecks of a 
world of humanity that has passed or is swiftly 
passing away. As far, however, as the inner life 
of the man is concerned, the fountains from which 
he draws his inspiration are fresh and new. The 



sky above him is a new sky, the earth beneath 
him is a new earth, and the living influences 
and life-guiding institutions about him are new 
institutions and new influences. With him, 
custom hath lost its sway, and time and change 
are the champions against the field. His life is 
not " rounded with a sleep," but whirls per- 
petually through great diversities of accident 
and circumstance. 

Humanity is here thrown back, as it were, 
upon its original elements, and is constrained to 
work out its destiny by native hardihood and in- 
ternal force alone. Like the rivers of the land, 
its course, it seems to us, is through scenes of 
more than ordinary grandeur and beauty; 
mountain elevations, illimitable plains, and 
valleys quiet and serene. If it chooses, how- 
ever, perversely to abandon the track of nature, 
and to seek channels of its own through baser 
soils — so be it, and with the workman rest the 
wages of his folly. 

Along the way are scattered indications of 
his progress, and far onward we see steadily ad- 
vancing messengers that bear tidings of the 
times that are at hand. Temporary in part, in 
part constant and abiding, are the signs that 
meet our eyes as we look abroad on the daily 
life, the growing customs, and the expanding 
character of the American people. Some of 
these shall pass away, because they are of the 
time, and some shall remain, durable as truth, 
because they are anchored in the permanent 
soul of man. From an inspection of the first, 
we shall gather amusement suited to the hour ; 
from the more serious scrutiny of the last, we 
shall derive grave omens of the chances that 
await the generations yet to be. 

Whether the aspects of Political Life, as it 
now unfolds itself in our Republic, in stations 
high and low, on fields broad and narrow, are 
to be held as belonging to the first or second of 
these classes, might be matter of question. 
With us they assume a double complexion; at 
times full of dignity and a certain naked and 
Roman simplicity ; at others broadening into all 
that we can conceive of the ludicrous ami gro- 
tesque. A noble senator standing on the plat- 
form of the nation in the honest performance 
of duty is to us an emblem ol 'whatever is man- 
ly and imposing; eeongreea of three hundred 
deliberating on grand questions of polity, on the 



320 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



armed defences of the country, on the com- 
merce that has wings in every quarter of 
the earth, are in such moments the imbodied 
power, the living personation of twenty-six 
sovereign empires. Here we breathe the in- 
spiring air of Alps and Allegany ; we are in 
the high places of the earth. But if, on the 
other hand, we enter the public room of a city 
ward, and discover a worthy individual, some 
forty years of age, bowed double with con- 
gratulations as he makes progress through the 
throng of citizens ; smiling upon faces that re- 
spond to him through squalor ; tender in his in- 
quiries after the health of babes and wives at 
home, of whose existence he has nothing more 
than a daring conjectural knowledge ; then as- 
cending a tub, barrel, or platform, as most con- 
venient, tearing the air as if it were cambric 
muslin, and rending the ears of the assemblage 
with vociferations loud, false, or incoherent, as 
it may chance — we must confess we look upon 
a counterfeit presentment, from which every 
line of dignity, truth, and nobleness, have been 
happily blotted by the artist. 

Political life has its turnpikes, its half-way 
houses, its highways and its by-ways ; there is 
a political costume and a political dialect, and 
without some knowledge of the road, and skill 
in the employment of the appropriate dress and 
idiom, the poor wayfarer would find himself, in 
truth, in foreign parts, and travelling on a 
thoroughfare that literally leads to nothing. 
We propose, therefore, for the benefit of those 
gentlemen who admire but can not reach, as 
well as for the edification of such as decry but 
do not covet advancement in the state, to make 
an inquiry into the arts of the politician, or the 
game of government, as practised under our 
own window and within sound of our own 
church-bells. 

In the first place, then, we must remark — in 
order to rescue ourselves from the charge of ex- 
aggeration, and our reader from the heinous 
sin of unbelief — that political life has a trans- 
forming power beyond any element we are ac- 
quainted with, except, perhaps, the water of 
stagnant ponds, which is said, by a quality in- 
herent in and peculiar to its own ooze, to be 
capable of converting the silly and dull-coated 
tadpole into the wide-awake, well-dressed, and 
open mouthed bull-frog. Whether this legend 
be false or true, certain it is, that not only is 
the outward habit, organ, and feature of the pol- 
itician changed by the atmosphere he breathes 
and the life he lives, but the very soul and facul- 
ties, the minutest springs and movements of the 
man are modified. His risings and settings, 
his gait and gesture, the cast of his eye and the 
grasp of his hand, his garments, his dwellinsr, 
his walks and his pauses, are not only regulated 
by the new spirit that has entered into him, but 
the pupil of the mind's eye itself becomes so 
enlarged or contracted that it imparts other and 
strange colors to whatever it contemplates. 
The moon, for example, is held by many pains- I 
taking and worthy people to be a round body | 



that dispenses light, and planetary in its char- 
acter ; now suppose a law to be enacted by an 
opposite party to veil the moon with blankets 
in order to arrest its action upon the tides, 
which it might be alleged is prejudicial to the 
interest of ferry -masters and fishermen ; why, 
out marches our politician with a grave face 
and gives the whole hypothesis over to the devil 
by a bold assertion that the moon is a large 
Dutchess county cheese, and he can bring 
affidavit-men who were in at the churning. 
Rivers flow or stagnate, numbers constitute a 
riotous mob or a peaceful meeting of citizens, 
bullion is heavy or light, and bank -paper rags 
or money, according to the prevailing humor of 
the believer. An enactment, which in its plain 
recorded sections and sub-sections duly ordered, 
seemed to him, at the first glance, a law of most 
excellent and wholesome tendency, begins, as the 
truth grows upon him (after a brief and busi- 
ness-like conversation with the executive), to 
expand into a many-headed hydra that threat- 
ens to devour the union and all the little chil- 
dren, and the Lord knows what besides ! 

We will suppose our politician to have at- 
tained this useful facility of viewing the world 
and whatever it inherits of good, bad, or indif- 
ferent, through either end of the telescope ; the 
first great lesson in his art is achieved. 

His next business is attendance on public 
meetings and places of resort. Here he acquires 
the politician's vernacular, and becomes familiar 
with the features and voices of the leaders and 
orators of his party. His own countenance 
after a while comes to be known, and by keep- 
ing it constantly at red-heat, as if the fire of 
his zeal were unquenchable, he begins to be 
reckoned and recognised as a useful member of 
the faction. Now a little judicious fawning 
well-bestowed, a little activity opportunely dis- 
played, and he will have emerged from the 
hedges and thickets in which he has been beat 
ing without a prospect of sport, and lo ! he 
on the avenue. 

If not a blood-nag, he may, at least, prove 
himself a good draught-horse, kind in harness 
and of most exceeding meekness and steadines 
of gait. Without Romulus, Rome had nc 
been built; without a patron, our politiciar 
can not ripen. He, therefore, becomes the fac- 
totum of some eminent manager; runs of er- 
rands from meeting to meeting, ward to ware 
collecting small statistics, popular rumors, and 
tap-room gossip, and at one auspicious Sunday, 
tarries from church, and ventures to indite a 
handbill. 

This elegant production (grander than the 
Paradise Lost in the eyes of its happy author), 
shines out for a fortnight or more the glory of 
walls, pumps, and fences, until washed into 
oblivion by the first pelting shower that falls. 
No matter, our aspiring gentleman is not damp- 
ened, for in the meantime he has had the fe- 
licity of being named as one of a committee of 
five to retire from one of the lesser assemblies 
of the ward, to draft resolutions " expressive of 



POLITICAL LIFE. 



321 



the sense of the meeting." This is certainly 
one of the most trying tasks that could be im- 
posed on the wit of man. Here has been a 
gathering of some two hundred individuals, 
who for more than an hour have had their noses 
in the direction of a sallow-faced gentleman, in 
dim spectacles, who has been stultifying them 
with a prescription compounded of one third 
newspaper, one third scripture illustration, and 
the balance general slang ; and now, forsooth, 
as if it were the pleasantest thing in the world, 
five plain-witted gentlemen are detailed from 
the mass to express the " sense of the meeting," 
in twelve sonorous paragraphs, very appro- 
priately headed " Resolutions," to denote the 
mortal agony and determination with which 
they were brought forth. 

The next labor of the politician, and the 
next indication of his progress in the regards 
of his party, is the appointment to carry a con- 
spicuous banner in a public procession. From 
this time forth he is acknowledged as a full lay- 
brother of the order, useful, zealous, and un- 
flinching ; although it must be confessed, that 
the banner-staff pressed with such force on the 
gastric region, on this first public trial, as to 
impair the poor man's digestion for more than 
a week. Unflinching, did we say ? Wo betide 
the poor rascal if he should draw back or be- 
tray the slightest symptom of reluctance, though 
he were called on to swallow a provision bag 
lined with Jack Cade, Tom Paine, and the im- 
mortal Pantagruel himself. Pleasanter employ- 
ment is, however, just now furnished for his 
appetite, for, as a particular favor, he is en- 
dowed by one of his patronising friends, with a 
ticket of admission to a grand barbecue or fes- 
tival, and there it is that he takes another step 
in political life, and offers a volunteer toast, in 
his own name. 

He may now be regarded as a public man, 
but the emphatic seal is not yet stamped on his 
character, until a certain eventful evening ar- 
rives. On this occasion there chances to be a 
thin attendance at the ward meeting ; the 
candles burn low ; the older speakers have been 
called for, but called in vain ; when a small, 
round man, with a face as pale as ashes, is 
seen struggling through the crowd at one corner 
of the room. To the astonishment, the utter 
and entire petrifaction of almost every man in 
the audience, he makes his way to the platform, 
dismisses his hat, and ascends, and as true as 
water flows and working-beams vibrate, he 
stretches out his arm and begins to deliver a 
speech ; an actual speech, full of live similes, 
earthquakes, battles, banners, and tornadoes, 
not to mention a mixed metaphor of a leviathan, 
or some such monster, riding through the land, 
like the illustrious Lafayette, in a triumphal 
barouche. 

At the conclusion of this effort, the meeting 
very rationally considering that the orator has 
had his turn, try their own lungs in three over- 
whelming cheers, every one of which sounds, 
in the ears of our politician, like the general I 
X 



liverer. 

The full glory of his career now breaks upon 
him; there is nothing which he can not achieve 
by the power of his eloquence ; he has but to 
lift up his voice, and the highest station heart 
could desire is hi3. In the meantime, how- 
ever, to keep in practice, and to prevent his 
oratory from running to waste, he is despatched 
into New Jersey or Connecticut, during a 
warmly-contested election, to cheer up the 
hearts of the faithful ; and since the last comet, 
no such luminary has crossed their horizon, 
dashing hither and thither, brandishing his 
arms aloft, and shouting " Freedom," at the 
top of his lungs, as if he expected to produce 
by the clamor an actual aerial descent of the 
goddess from the clouds for the express purpose 
of carrying the then pending contest. 

Who can deny services like these or doubt 
their value ? The period has at length arrived 
for rewarding this assiduous and laborious 
member of the party. He has plied his cane at 
public meetings, he has supported banners, he 
has contrived handbills and penned resolutions, 
he has spoken, he has shouted in the cause, and 
he is made an alderman ! 

Ubiquity has now become an important attri- 
bute of our political Hercules. He must be 
seen everywhere ; heard of everywhere ; must 
be known as a getter-up of theatrical benefits 
and charity ball3, and a puller-down of public 
abuses and overgrown monopolies. At steam- 
boat landings, at the departure of packets, on 
all festival occasions, whether Hibernian fid- 
dlings, or steamship entertainments, he must 
be there ; like Dr. Faustus, the fiend would 
tear him if he failed the hour. He staggers 
under a pressure of engagements, and seems 
laboring with some spasmodic affection, which 
perpetually lifts his right arm and contracts the 
fingers of the hand corresponding to the grasp 
of salutation. 

In this way his voice becomes at length as 
familiar as the toll of the town-clock ; his per- 
son is recognised like the town-hall itself, and 
the poor man's hand is as much "frequented'' 
as the open thoroughfare of the same. This 
accomplishes his purpose ; his name is known 
and talked of, and although in these innumer- 
able places he has never said nor done one 
memorable thing or single act, that, taken by 
itself, would be considered of the slightest mo- 
ment, yet so thoroughly are the public blinded 
by this perpetual whirl and motion, appearance 
and reappearance, in the form of toast or senti- 
ment, song, speech, or resolution, that this 
empty-pated pull-ball, is, in the course of time, 
regarded as an able, popular, and influential 
character. 

With ubiquity, assurance, broad faced, bound- 
less, and invincible, is a necessary attendant. 
How meek a man is our juggler I How patient- 
ly he bears all the burdens men can lay upon 
him! With how swift an assumption dots he 
accept the utmost duties that can be imposed ! 



322 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



No matter how arduous, how high, how low, 
how deep the labor that is suggested, he will 
undertake it all. On all committees, whether 
financial, military, civil, or charitable, you can 
not balk him. That problem in alms-giving, 
in science, literature, or gastronomy, can not be 
contrived so tough that he will not solve it. 
He would gravely set about squaring a circle, or 
calculating the longitude, if called upon, with- 
out for a moment entertaining the thought of 
advancing his own want of knowledge or fit- 
ness as a reasonable plea for declining to act. 
No! no ! all is fish that comes to his net, and 
goes to make up the grand chowder of his po- 
litical reputation. What matters it to him 
whether he makes his progress by a fair, 
straight-forward, honest head-wind, or if his 
sail catches every little trifling flaw, side- cur- 
rent, and gust of air — though he be constantly 
required to shift the helm, to veer, to tack, to 
beat up and down, to box the compass, to ride 
on the " hog's back," to divide " hen and chick- 
ens," as long as he can keep from the perdition 
of the " Frying Pan !" 

£t is now, for a time, a question whether this 
man shall continue to rise in his profession, or 
whether he is doomed to linger in a dull and 
tedious mediocrity for the remainder of his 
natural life ; in other words, whether he shall 
be allowed to play the demagogue and people's 
man on a large scale, or whether he is to be 
confined entirely to the purlieus of the city, the 
arena of the taproom and porterhouse. 

At first, we think we discover in him a down- 
ward tendency ; but look again, and lo ! the 
creature is as busy as a polypus in summer, 
stretching out a hand here and a hand there, 
and still another there, and so effectually de- 
voting his office and his leisure to his own pur- 
poses, that he has no sooner ceased to be an 
alderman for the city, than he has become a 
member of congress for the nation ; at which, 
it is true, his simple-minded old friends in the 
country are vastly astonished, never dreaming 
that the man " had it in him," and ignorant as 
their own unshorn lambs of the machinery by 
which the deficiency of natural organs was in- 
geniously supplied. 

He has now attained an age and station 
which requires that some extraordinary develop- 
ment of his greatness should be made. Shall 
it exhibit itself in the shape of a " Dinner to 
Mr. Whiff" — the presentation of " two silver 
goblets and a punch apparatus," or shall it 
come in the more imposing form of a " visit" 
to the northern, southern, or western states, as 
it may happen ? 

The select friends of the great man — in other 
words, the proprietors of Mr. Whiff, the poli- 
tician, in fee-simple, and who take upon them- 
selves to play off the puppet for such purposes 
as they may think convenient and proper — 
have fixed, we will suppose, upon the " visit," 
as affording material of the most comprehensive 
kind. Now the trumpets begin to blow; ban- 
ners arc unfurled, and by dint of skilful para- 



graphs and the assumption of an immense in- 
terest in the slightest movements of Mr. Whiff, 
on the part of certain operatives or " wire- 
workers," the nation, or a considerable portion 
of it, is thrown into a state of intense and most 
uncomfortable excitement. It is announced, 
with the utmost solemnity, in a morning paper, 
that Mr. Whiff lodged the night before last in 
Tompkinsville ; and such was the anxiety to 
get a glimpse of his person and listen to his 
well-known eloquence, that the large room of 
the largest public house was converted into 
lodgings to furnish accommodations for the thou- 
sands, who retired to their couches highly de- 
lighted and soothed by the effects of his ora- 
tory ! 

The afternoon journal, not to be outdone in 
this grand overture of trumpets, makes its ap- 
pearance with a chubby news-boy at the head 
of its columns, waving a fragment of pocket- 
handkerchief, with " Postscript !" worked on in 
large type, and divulges the astounding fact, 
that "just as our informant was leaving, Mr. 
Whiff had put his foot on board the * Adeline 
Elmira,' for the purpose of crossing Smith's 
Ferry for Tomtown, on the other side, which he 
was expected to reach in about twenty minute3 
from the time of embarkation !" 

Thus by devoting a daily column to the say- 
ings and doings of Mr. Whiff, and by emphasi- 
zing his most trifling acts and adventures, the 
blood of the populace is set on fire, and at last 
Mr. Whiff arrives. Here is a pretty tumult ! 
A compact mob, like another Argus, apparently 
all eyes, presses toward the wharf, and the very 
moment the great man lands, he is snatched 
from his feet and hurried into an open carriage, 
about which another crowd is gathered to stare 
at the illustrious, just escaped, as it were out 
of the belly of the sea-monster at the landing. 

Now ensues a scene in which the politician 
plays the leading character, with a swarm of 
citizens at his skirts by way of supernumeraries 
and subordinates. Mr. Peter Whiff, standing 
erect in his carriage (with a tail dragging be- 
hind of which the joints are hacks, coaches, 
light wagons, sulkeys, and milk-carts), advan- 
ces through the main streets, bowing gracious- 
ly to such heads and faces as may present them- 
selves from balconies, house-tops, and areas. 
On floats the triumphal procession, and sundry 
little short-legged gentlemen make it their busi- 
ness to ply their paddles ahead of the carriage 
of Mr. Whiff, and to cast frequent glances of 
profound reverence and enthusiasm toward the 
person of that distinguished gentleman. An 
old lady, a devout admirer of great men, stands 
against the park railing, with a pocket-glass at 
her eye surveying the outlines of Mr. Whiff's 
person, and satisfying herself of the actual 
outward dimensions of that wonderful indi- 
vidual — of whom she has heard so much, and 
knows so little. 

Every now and then as he passes, some win- 
dow, some roof, or church vestibule, goes into 
a spasm, the most marked symptoms of which 



POLITICAL LIFE. 



323 



are a violent waving of black beaver hats, and I In the first place, a radical unfitness in the 
a deep guttural noise, emirted from the throat. | man for the part he has assumed ; an entire 
Meantime the hero takes snuff and waves his I unconsciousness of the requirements and duties 



pocket-handkerchief enchanting] y, relieving 
himself at times, however, by sustaining his 
coat-skirts by the aid of his two hands thrust 
underneath the same ; about this posture there 
is always an air of coolness and dignity which 
has its effect with the populace. He at length 
reaches the public house, his destined quarters ; 
is hurried up the steps, thrust out of a window, 
and although the poor man's throat is almost a 
turnpike of dust, and his lungs in scarcely bet- 
ter condition than a blacksmith's bellows out 
of use for a twelvemonth, he must make a 
speech. 

At the conclusion another ecstacy pervades 
the mob; the great man withdraws, is fed, 
watered, and put to bed, like the great South 
American Lama. The next day he is roused 
at daylight, or thereabout, by a committee of 
citizens, and from that moment till the going 
down of the sun he is put steadily to the pleas- 
ant torture of having his whole body shaken, 
his joints disturbed, and bis tongue unhinged, 
by incessant graspings, welcomes, and saluta- 
tions. A second day he is transported from 
place to place, haHs of science, town halls, 
lecture rooms, repositories, theatres, and public 
buildings, squares, wharfs, and cemeteries, 
until he almost covets a snug property in one 
of the last, where he would doubtless lie very 
quiet and easy, unless there happened to be a 
* wire-worker," or committee-man, in the next 
grave. A third day, and there is no pause ; a 
new round of objects demands his attention, the 
neighboring villages, the almshouse, peniten- 
tiaries, and Avhat not, are to be visited ; and 
visited they are, and at each and every of these 
Mr. Whiff disembogues a speech : in fact, 
wherever he goes, like a public fountain, he is 
one ceaseless spout, spout, spout ! and like that 
too, whatever he utters falls back into the 
original basin, and is redelivered over and over 
again. 

The public sympathies have by this time 
been taxed to the utmost, and the capabilities 
of Mr. Whiff's constitution so thoroughly test- 
ed, that " his duties at Washington," or " ur- 
gent business at home," calls him away, and 
the town is again allowed to relapse into a 
comparatively calm and temperate condition. 
The rocket has exploded ; Ave have seen all the 
brilliancy it could display, rtnd can afford to be 
content until the state pyrotechnists shall be 
pleased to " let off" another. 

We have thus compounded the character of 
a politician by the synthetic process] and now, 
in pursuance of the more ordinary line of our 
duty, let us for a moment apply the analytical, 
and take in pieces the puppet we have con- 
structed — in order that we may learn what pro- 
portion the wood, hay, and stubble, bear to 
each other in the machine, and also by what 
springs it is set in motion. 
What then do wc discover ? 



of the character. In him we discern no primal 
sympathy with mankind, which urges him into 
the vocation ; no strong, stern sense of the 
wants, capacities, and rights, of the race w T hose 
champion he proposes to enact. What to him 
are the people ? Painted faces, shadows, auto- 
mata — anything rather than beings full to over- 
flowing, of passions, sensibilities, convictions — 
creatures with hearts in their bosoms, and heads 
whose only deficiency lies in an inability to dis- 
cern the nothingness of such as pretend to serve 
and guide them. 

With this moral incapacity, exists an intel- 
lectual one quite as broad and startling. Past 
ages have not been his study; Sidney nor Ad- 
ams, nor the constellation that lives and shines 
in history, have furnished for him the lustre in 
which great minds love to walk and meditate. 
What knows he of the past ? The utmost re- 
trospection of his memory is to the date of some 
war, some junto or coalition, which shall serve 
him as a topic of partisan declamation. Of the 
present ? Not the spirit that moves and ani- 
mates the masses of mankind, and makes itself 
visible and audible in amended charters, re- 
claimed rights, and disfranchised despotisms. 
No ! with him the chronicle of the hour is suf- 
ficient for the hour. 

The nearest gazette can instruct him in the 
latest party triumph; in the proceedings of the 
last grand convention, assembled to nominate 
some cipher or other to an office of trust and 
authority ; and teach him to calculate the 
chances of obtaining a snug sinecure in the 
event of his election. While others are bat 
tling and dying under the true flag of their 
country for the privileges of men, he prefers to 
march in some street-procession, under a more 
peaceful, a less perilous emblem. 

We would not have him fight ; but we would 
have him enter upon the business of statesman 
and legislator with a knowledge, a feeling 
knowledge, of the great sacrifices others are 
elsewhere making to achieve rights and insti- 
tutions which he is called on to perpetuate and 
secure. We would have him consecrate him- 
self to the service of the state by a baptism no- 
bler than that of the brewhouse : by a life in- 
cluding less effort to droWn the divine calling 
of the patriot in the clamor of trumpets, the roll 
of vacant drums, and the idle shouts of multi- 
tudes. 

Again, this man's little regard for the people 
is shown in the peculiar mode of progression 
which he adopts. Instead of being advano d 
by the spontaneous popular will, lie moves for- 
ward on a frame-work of caucuses and com- 
mittees, on which he Stands as dexterously 1 > « I 

anced as the best posture-master of them nil. 

He does not fight his battles in the naked anr 

real strength of the popular cause, hut prefen 

to Wtge a war of junto with junto; to plot an. 

counterplot in committee, and to represent tin 



324 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



3, in all his political movements, by a fig- 
ure of speech. The result is as might be ex- 
pected ; he moves up this wooden staircase, pre- 
carious scaffolding, step by step, and, from a 
mere groundling, comes in time to be master 
of the house, without a solitary tittle to justify 
his occupancy; without, in fact, the real re- 
gards of the nation. But wo betide him, if one 
day a blast should arise when he thinks not, 
and, rushing against the frail fabric of his for- 
tunes, sweep them away into utter and irre- 
versible oblivion. 

The selfish insincerity of this character is 
again betrayed in the false and sounding style 
of his declamation. His oratory is vague, hol- 
low, and purposeless; full of tropes, figures, 
and apostrophes, but wanting in genuine ear- 
nestness and truth. He is the noisiest of the 
worshippers, but he is not on that account 
more of a believer in the worship. Instead of 
the plain, manly directness which becomes one 
who is uttering truths deep as life, and on 
which much of the happiness of life depends, 
he converts his discourse into a sort of operatic 
rehearsal, in which all the quavers, flourishes, 
and variations of the language, are attempted. 
Or, on the other hand, he bursts upon us in a 
tropical exuberance of flowers, sun-beams, 
and prattling waters ; concluding, perhaps, 
with a terrific tornado, or volcanic outbreak. 
His heart is not there, and all that he conjures 
up is fantastical, unreal, and out of place. His 
written productions partake of the same grand 
element of insincerity ; they are loud, sonorous, 
and empty ; full of Johnsonian gravity and in- 
digenous no-meaning. 

Another pernicious ingredient in the politi- 
cian we have attempted to delineate, is a hun- 
ger and thirst for office ; not a desire to hold 
office because office must be held, or from an 
absolute avarice of the emoluments of place, 
but a passion for office for the sake of office, an 
affection for the petty consequence, the brief 
authority, with which it is clothed by his own 
imagination, and the misjudging people by 
whom he is surrounded. 

The holders of office resemble, in our hum- 
ble judgment, the holders of the carriage box- 
seat ; exalted above us, it is true ; endowed 
with certain badges of authority, the whip, reins, 
and coachman's hat; but acting throughout in 
our behalf, and for our convenience, although 
certain dullards along the road may choose to re- 
gard them as the very miracles and patterns of 
humanity, the envy of taverns, the glory of 
bar-rooms, the wonder and delight of large pub- 
lic-houses. 

These gentlemen seem to regard themselves 
as enjoying an exclusive prescriptive right to 
places of trust and profit ; and we are almost 
satisfied that anatomical investigation would 
discover a conformation of body peculiarly suit- 
ed to the occupancy of aldermen's chairs and 
clerk's cushions. 

It is a fact that will bear scrutiny, we think, 
that there are thousands in the United States 



who prefer the wages of office to the rewards 
of regular industry, and who would render twice 
the amount of labor for one dollar of govern- 
ment pay, which would be required to produce 
the same return in the ordinary course of trade. 
They feel that they are resting under the shad- 
ow of the government wings ; that, let what 
will happen, the quarter's salary will arrive in 
due season, and that their sole responsibility and 
duty are to toil blindly on, heeding nothing, anx- 
ious for nothing but the predominance of the 
party-planet that sustains them in their place. 

To do justice, however, to the character we 
have described, it must be confessed that there 
is less of this greed for salary than might be ex- 
pected; though he does not fail, in the long 
run to discover some Pactolian stream that can 
be diverted into his own treasury, in the shape 
of perquisite, commission on avenues, or other 
honorary job. He, therefore, like others, at 
last associates office with the happiest inci- 
dents of his life. The setting up of a new car- 
riage from the proceeds, the erection of a more 
stylish dwelling-house, or the giving of his first 
grand entertainment, with new brass lamps, 
and mulatto waiters to match. 

To all these radical errors and deficiencies 
is to be added another circumstance of some 
moment. The multiplicity of objects in which 
he is obliged to feel or feign an interest, and 
the diversities of character he is expected to 
sympathize with, as a man of the people, tend 
to dissipate the elements of his own natural 
character, and to destroy its original bias. No 
single feeling in his breast, no faculty or qual- 
ity, save an all-absorbing tact, has time to 
ripen or mature, and his whole nature is over- 
run with a growth of noxious, distorted, and un- 
wholesome objects. A few of the primary in- 
stincts may maintain their place, but the integ- 
rity, the truth and beauty, which belong to a 
nature nobly and courageously developed, ate 
not there. 

Better would it have been for him had he de- 
voted his life to the contrivance of a mill-wheel, 
or the production of a single excellent specimen 
of timothy or asparagus ; for then there would 
have been something like honesty in the man, 
an enthusiasm true and unaffected, and a vein 
of thought which might have been relied on as 
genuine and pure. 

Forgetting entirely the claims of nature and 
the commands of conscience, he leads a life of 
manoeuvre, duplicity, and stratagem. He is the 
slave of time and chance. An error of saluta- 
tion ; a solecism of opinion ; a single false step 
in the grand train of political plotting, frights 
him more than the bugbears of conscience or 
the alarms of reason. He lives in a wheel of 
destiny, where a moment's pause, a hair-breadth 
deviation, would destroy him. He has leased 
out his life to clowns and quidnuncs, and he 
has no more choice of action or locomotion 
than the sultan surrounded by a troop of bloody- 
minded janissaries. His life is therefore false, 
hollow, and servile. There is sufficient of ex- 



MR. JAMES GRANT. 



325 



ternal gilding to dazzle the multitude, and to 
achieve mere worldly success ; but the heart is 
wiser than the head, and there he fails. After 
all, the world and the world's affections are not 
with him. He serves a purpose ; he can ride 
his stage like the sorriest hackney of them all; 
and then he is taken from the harness and suc- 
ceeded by a jade as poor and wretched, but just 
as serviceable. In time he may live to be turn- 
ed upon the common, and when his hour arrives 
he drops into a cold, cheerless, and unapplaud- 
ed grave. 

The true statesman, with nature's stamp of 
supremacy on every action, ascends from the 
midst of the people by slow degrees, and attains 
his zenith of power and splendor through a long 
tract of diligent and steady labor. 

He begins with no ostentatious parade of 
banners or bustle of zeal in the popular cause. 
He plants his first steps on the foundation-prin- 
ciples of government ; reaches forth his arms 
to such branches and buttresses as history and 
humanity may furnish ; and, by a slow prog- 
ress, succeeds at last in scaling a height from 
which he may look forth on the kingdoms of 
the earth, and learn how the world is governed. 
In this pursuit no petty spirit of partisanship is 
engendered ; the small pomp of personal conse- 
quence is abashed. 

Deaf to the idle tumult of the hour, he hears 
the loud cry of despairing nations ; the voices 
of the prison-house ; the sundering of fetters, 
strong as death ; the eager welcome of dawn- 
ing light ; and, as God is with them, the shout 
of enfranchisement and deliverance. His soul 
shoots along the axis of the earth, to the north 
and to the south, and either ocean only arrests 
its eager sympathies. 

But are the interests of his own day and na- 
tion forgotten in this wide survey of past and 
present ? No ; rather remembered the more, 
and served the more truly. From a mind preg- 
nant with whatever other times and other peo- 
ple have done or suffered in the great cause 
of human happiness, spring the guarded rights, 
the enlightened welfare, of the country that he 
calls his own. The fiercer the assault, the 
more secret the breach made elsewhere against 
the immunities of mankind, the steadier the de- 
fence, the more sagacious the protection of the 
same privileges at home. On all occasions, on 
every imminent emergency, he is prepared to 
justify the principles of his faith, and to give a 
new sanction to the institutions under which 
he dwells. He lives in the eye of Truth and 
Liberty. He shall descend to his grave with the 
tears and blessings of mankind. 



MR. JAMES GRANT.* 

Mr. James Grant, the celebrated British 
author, stands about five-feet-three in his 

* Portraits of Public Characters. By Hi'' luthor of 
"The Great Metropolli ;" "Random Recollection* of 

the Lords and Commons," &c, &c. Saunders & Otlej : 
London, 1840. 

21 



stockings ; on reflection, we should perhaps 
say five-feet-four. His breadth across the shoul- 
ders is not more than ordinary ; but we trust 
we shall not be regarded as trespassing on del- 
icacy, in making known a fact of considerable 
importance, namely, that he has a singularly 
well-developed pair of legs. We are not aware 
that Mr. Grant has ever been esteemed by any- 
body as, strictly speaking, a colossus ; but, as 
will be observed from the remark we have just 
made, his claims to be regarded as such are by 
no means slight. The story, therefore, of Mr. 
Grant's having kicked an Irish porter through 
one of the upper windows of Westminster Ab- 
bey, although needing confirmation, is physio- 
logically possible. 

Mr. Grant commenced life, as we are in- 
formed — having no personal knowledge of this 
fact, we can not be so positive in the statement 
as we might otherwise have been — as a tapster 
at the Cock and Bull, Cheapside ; from which 
situation he rose, in due course of time, to be 
head waiter at the Gas and Bellows, Strand ; 
and finally, having been discovered one day by 
the editor of one of the leading London jour- 
nals, writing out an account of a fight between 
the barmaid and cook of the Bellows, on one of 
the parlor-windows with a magnificent quartz 
crystal, he was immediately taken into service 
as a reporter, and employed to furnish nightly 
descriptions of the various rencontres it. the 
house of lords, between honorable gentlemen 
on the subject of the Reform bill. We unfor- 
tunately have it not in our power to state at 
this moment whether he occupied a place in 
the left-hand gallery, to the right of the speak- 
er's chair, or on the left hand of the speaker, 
in the right gallery ; our impression is it was 
the left-right. A curious story is told illustra- 
tive of this part of Mr. Grant's career, which, 
although not of the slightest earthly importance, 
may be worth repeating here. It is said that 
a pet donkey belonging to a coalheaver in a 
neighboring street, was in the habit of watch- 
ing the messenger who was sent from the office 
of the journal in question, to receive such sup- 
plies of the night's reports as Mr. Grant might 
be prepared to furnish. Just as he turned the 
corner leading to the door of St. Stephen's, the 
donkey, fixing his eye steadily on the editor's 
messenger, would start off atasmait siallop, 
and, as a matter of course, reach the door sev- 
eral seconds before the messenger, and would 
immediately commence setting up ■ portentous 
bray, as if to give notice to Mr. Giant that 
more "copy," as it is technically styled, was 
needed. This summons, we need hardly add, 
Mr. Grant at all times cheerfully answeied; 
coming out at each call with a targe roll of 
manuscript report, and placing it sinilin-Iy in 
the messenger's hand. 

With regard to Mr. Grantfe personal habits, 

we have it fortunately LB OUT power to !■- 
particular. In the morning, having hist washed, 

shaved, and breakfasted, ha frraapi his eaae 

and sallies forth; his first call is on the va!*t 



326 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, and, hav- 
ing ascertained to his entire satisfaction that 
his Grace had a tranquil night of it, that he 
has already risen, and is engaged in answering 
his correspondents in a hlue dimity morning- 
gown, Mr. Grant hids the valet good-morn- 
ing, and descends the steps. His next busi- 
ness is to trip up a one-legged beggar, and 
while apologizing for the accident, and admin- 
istering alms, he draws from him an accurate 
account of the various impostures practised by 
the metropolitan mendicants on the unwary, 
by the way of forged letters, calls on behalf of 
the daughters of deceased naval officers, and 
applications for the relief of sick widows with 
seven small children, of which two are always 
at the breast. Mr. Grant theu, in all probabil- 
ity, takes a pot of small-beer at the nearest 
tavern ; and seeing just at that moment the 
coach of Lord Brougham entering town, with a 
vacant place on the box, he invites himself to a 
ride, and, ascending by means of the ordinary 
leather straps, he takes a seat by the side of 
his lordship's coachman, and enters into a 
very pleasant gossipping conversation with that 
functionary, in the course of which he learns a 
vast deal about the characteristic habits of his 
lordship ; among others, a peculiarity his lord- 
ship has of winking at his footman when off 
duty, and of indulging himself in throwing mi- 
raculous somersets backward and forward over 
the top of the coach, whenever it has occasion 
to stand still for more than a couple of minutes 
at a time. Before leaving his elevated friend, 3Ir. 
Grant probably extorts from him a promise that 
if his lordship should chance to drop a wig 
in the course of any of these surprising gym- 
nastic exercises, to bring it straightway to him 
at the office of the London Journal, of which 
Mr. Grant is editor, and receive half-a-crown 
for his pains. 

But Sunday is by all odds the busiest day 
with Mr. Grant. From morning till night he 
is on the move; popping his head in at Mr. 
Croly's church in time to hear that distinguish- 
ed orator announce his text ; hurrying away to 
hear Mr. Fox, the Unitarian clergyman's, first- 
ly ; the Rev. Mr. Melvill's, secondly or thirdly ; 
the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel's, fourthly ; 
and so on through all the divines of the metrop- 
olis. It is said there is not a man in London 
who performs a more laborious sabbath-day's 
work than Mr. Grant, including even the cler- 
gymen who preach three times, and the gentle- 
men who sing base in the various metropolitan 
churches. 

By the way, we should not forget to mention 
here that this gentleman is the author of " Ran- 
dom Recollections of the House of Lords," in 1 
vol., post octavo ; " Random do. Commons," 
do., do. ; two series of " The Great Metropo- 
lis," two vols, each; "The Metropolitan Pul- 
pit," in we forget how many volumes ; " Sketch- 
es of London," 1 vol., octavo, with cuts ; and 



some other works,, one of which, <•' Portraits of 
Public Characters," in 2 vols., is, we believe, 
just out. It is not positively known whether 
Mr. Grant has ever written poetry (these works 
being all in prose), but, it is supposed, if he 
should ever undertake poetry, it would be 
his object to rival Sir Richard Blackmore; and 
by many it is considered, should he make 
the attempt, that he would be successful. 

The intellectual characteristics of Mr. Grant 
are easily made out. His style, although, per- 
haps, it can not be said to be equal to that of 
Mr. Jeffrey or the Hon. Babington Macauley, 
in brilliancy, is certainly one of the most re- 
markable of the present day. There seems to 
be in this distinguished gentleman's mind, if 
we may venture upon so bold a phrase, a sort 
of circumambiency, which leads him to beat 
about his subject, keeping, in the meantime, at 
a due distance from it ; much, as our readers 
may have observed, as one of the horses on 
sale at Tattersall's dances round the jockey, 
who holds a rein and whip in his hand, look- 
ing at him with great earnestness and gravity, 
but taking heed, meanwhile, to keep very re- 
spectfully out of his reach. That this is ow- 
ing to a peculiar conformation of intellect on 
the part of Mr. Grant, we are satisfied ; but 
nothing could be happier than this singular 
style for the class of subjects he has chosen, 
being chiefly distinguished statesmen, mighty 
divines, and gigantic bibliopoles ; to use a 
significant phrase which Mr. Hume occasion- 
ally employs in the course of one of his eco- 
nomical speeches, " It's just the thing." 

Nothing could be more artful than Mr. 
Grant's narrative of what he has seen ; and we 
are satisfied if it should ever be his good or 
evil fortune to meet with a dog Cerberus, we 
should immediately have Ihree graphic biog- 
raphies from his pen, one for each head ; and 
the same of a hundred-headed hydra, if he 
should happen to fall in with one ; a life for 
each head, or one tremendous life in a hundred 
volumes. Mr. Grant's pictures are all full- 
lengths ; and although he can not be said to be 
strictly rhetorical in his manner, yet there are 
very few divines who can equal him in subdi- 
visions, in dwelling skilfully on a topic, and in 
going back to it after it is entirely exhausted. 
In fact, we are pretty well convinced, although 
we have no positive information on the subject, 
unless our moral conviction that such is the 
case can be so considered, that Mr. Grant's 
habits of writing are like those of our country- 
man, Mr. Willis, whom he describes in his 
latest production as follows : " He does not 
take nor require time to think, when engaged 
in his literary avocations. Ideas crowd so fast 
upon him, his perception of the best points in 
his subjects is so ready, that the moment he 
takes his pen in hand he starts off at a railroad- 
rate, and never slackens his pace until he be- 
comes physically exhausted." 



THE SOLEMN VENDUE. 



327 



THE SOLEMN VENDUE. 

Mr. Abraham Sable was in town a short 
time since, for the purpose of selling a few 
vaults in Christ church churchyard, Tarrytown. 
There is " snug lying" there, I will warrant, 
almost as snug as in the abbey, and our melan- 
choly-minded friend did well to bring them to 
the New York market, where purchasers must 
be found, if anywhere. Think but of those who 
want graves, and you will know whether there 
should be bidders for his commodity. First, 
there are all the weary, whose hope in life has 
perished ; the suiter that sought love, and found 
tears, anguish, dark, dreary nights, and long, 
melancholy, purposeless days ; the friend, whose 
close companion of many dear, dear hours, has 
fallen from him with a cold look, and unforgiv- 
ing eye, and a hand close shut to his expectant 
grasp, like stone ; the merchant, whose last 
ship has gone down, far off, with all her freight- 
age in the cruel Indian ocean ; and the poor 
lone mother, whose only son sunk in that same 
ship, in the gloomy sea, and whose heart begins 
to break over the thought that her home is des- 
olate for ever. Here is a desire for graves ! 

There are other chapmen for the occasion; 
the poor politician, by whom opportunity has 
swept and left him on the shore, officeless, re- 
morseful, moping evermore, with hands thrust in 
his pockets, and eyes that wander from face to 
face bereft of the old smile, the urgent greeting 
look, that be; 
vember ides. 

There is another who would seek his grave 
as familiarly as his own chamber in the night, 
who would make his couch there as cheerfully 
as under his own roof-tree, one who would 
stretch in the dark shadow of the vault, as read- 
ily as under the canopy of a green tree, or a 
bright cloud in summer; for him whose fair re- 
nown is soiled and mildewed to the world — for 
him a cheap family-vault would be a home- 
stead, indeed, a quiet retiring-room, into which 
he could step and fall asleep from the slanders 
and evil tongues of men. Bid high for the 
grave ! for it is a desirable property, a habita- 
tion that can shelter us from the harshest storm 
that ever yet blew over the earth. Let us buy 
graves early ! for he that dies without this great 
provision is poor — poorer than the neediest beg- 
gar, and must have the last charity dealt to 
him, the mightiest. But who shall sell graves ? 
Who is powerful enough to deal in this wonder- 
ful ware — this concluding and imperishable 
merchandise ? It seems as if an angel, and no 
inferior one, should descend in our midst and 
put to sale this great commodity. 

" Who bids ? Who bids, for this fine vault, 
with accommodations complete — dug in the 
choicest clay, with eight steps descending, and 
a warranted door of iron ? Comfortable tene- 
ment, secure, silent, and rare. No arrest, no 
service of process, can come there. No judge's 
voice, no marshal's truncheon, no oppressor's 
rod. Who bids ? who bids ? You of the slip- 



pered shank and hollow cheek — it is yours — 
for you have already taken possession with 
one foot planted on your new estate. Another, 
larger, ampler, more spacious — for a more com- 
modious tenant. Apoplectic mortal ! I have 
your bid — it is a good one, and well thought of, 
for next week you shall enter upon your pur- 
chase. A third ! Why do you draw back ? Will 
none in this great crowd try for a third ? Ah ! 
there is a modest chapman : pale, thought-sick 
youth — you must drop, drop with others, and 
elders — this measures you to an inch, and the 
deed will be made out to-morrow, before the 
sun sets." 

This would be an attentive auditory, I think, 
a respectful and silent throng of purchasers, 
and the competition wondrously timid and ac- 
commodating. Neighbor would nod off the bar- 
gain from his own head to neighbor, and the 
solemn salesman would lift up his voice alone 
in the streets of Babel. 

There is also a choice of graves. Who 
bids ? who bids ? Here is a damp, cold vault, 
laid in a hard soil, with perpetual drops oozing 
through upon the coffin; lay there the dull- 
hearted miser, in whose breast no kindly af- 
fection took root, and where hope, charity, 
love of neighbors, kindred, and children, with- 
ered away in the chill region of self-seeking 
and love of gain. 

Yonder the spade has done its work in a 
cheerful slope, on which the sun smiles through 
three quarters of the long summer day ; it is a 
fitting burial-place for the good man, whose 
eye, like this pleasant upland, loved to look 
forth on scenes of peace, quietness, and con- 
tent, and to lend to them a new beauty and joy 
borrowed from itself. 

Here, where the grave strikes deep amid 
the gnarled roots of this great oak forest, that 
contends manfully with wind and tempest, and 
holds stout fast of the earth, hither bring the bier 
of the towering son of power, whose renown was 
immovably established, and whose fair head 
lifted itself high up toward heaven without fear, 
or rather, with great rejoicing and delight. Un- 
der this evergreen turf, crowned with early 
flowers in spring, with long-lingering snow- 
drops in the ungenial time, the great river ever 
murmuring by, and the distant mountain stretch- 
ing its shadow over the water till it falls on this 
selected spot of earth, here lay the poet, in the 
midst of glorious sights an J sounds and odors, 
of which he is a part now, and was once a 
partaker. 

Who shall have this grave ? Who bids 1 
Who bids for a sepulchre that frowns upon us 
fearfully like this? Adders' nests, newts, and 
ground-moles beneath— long, hoary, moss-clad 
trunks midway — sombre birds of omen, the evil- 
boding crow, and the grim, sellisli owl, above : 
who seeks to lie there / Ah ! it is that black- 
haired man, with blood-spots on his wrist, and 
an unquiet devil in his eye; it is his ; and lie 
longs for it, for be is a murderer that cowers 
and trembles in the broad face of light. Hurry 



328 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



him to his grave, and bless him. Be quick with 
the obsequies, for he gasps in the pure air of 
day. Tarry not ; for Jesus' sake tarry not 
with tressels and biers, sable hangings and 
hearses, for he yearns for his couch, as the child 
yearns for his cradle, or the wild beast pants 
for its den. Hide him ! hide him swiftly in 
the earth ! — going, gone ! That bid passed like 
an arrow, and a readier chapman one could not 
desire. 

Whom shall we lay here, in this desolate 
chamber, built in a blasted soil, on the banks 
of a dry channel, over which withered trees 
stretch their dead arms, and in the top of one 
of them lies the skeleton of an eagle, with his 
wings drooping over the sides of his nest, struck 
dead by irresistible lightning i Whose grave 
is this ? Thine, old Indian chief ! Apparel 
his heroic old corse in its feathers, its buffalo- 
robe, and its wampum-belt, and lay it down in 
this region of gloom and barrenness ; a kindred 
home for a kindred spirit. 

This is a sweet tomb in this delicious vale, 
smothered, as it were, in excess of roses, violets, 
and golden buttercups; a gentle wind sighs 
along its roof and makes apt music for the 
slumbering tenant beneath. Birds of pleasant 
plumage and tender song haunt here, and a 
field-lark hath built its emblematic nest (from 
which it soars so steadily and cheerfully to 
heaven) at the very mouth of the grave. A 
choice tenant must inhabit so choice a tomb. 
It is that pale maiden, on whose cheek a faint 
bloom lingers amid a fast triumphing paleness, 
as a little tinge of summer colors, oftentimes, 
the icy skirt of February, retreating and return- 
ing ever and anon. Lay that gentle lady gen- 
tly down ! She was deserted in her prime, and 
carries a broken heart, meekly and mildly, to 
her appointed home. 

Far beyond, where poison henbane, and 
hemlock, and deadly aconite, with creepers of 
noxious quality — just where that skull of a cop- 
per-snake peeps from the earth, find a suitable 
burial for witch and Sorceress, and compounder 
of fatal drugs. The adder will creep to her 
grave, and the black raven flap his wings over 
it in triumph, for powers of evil, whether of 
water or air, are kinsfolk and connexions. 

Bury the boatman by the shore, and the as- 
tronomer on the mountain ; the warrior lay by 
the side of the cataract, whose din mimics a 
mighty battle, the clashing of shields, the bray- 
ing of trumpets, and the shock of foaming car- 
nage. 

For the sons of doubt, whose lives were 
swift and dark with turbid thoughts, find a sep- 
ulture on the banks of gloomy currents that 
have their well-springs in cold, icy hills, and 
their ending in wide, illimitable, restless seas. 

Bury the quiet man in valleys, and the 
children of strife in the storm-swept plain, or in 
the heart of cities, where they shall be tram- 
pled on by friend and enemy, and have no quiet 
nor rest even in the grave. 

Bury children in gardens and scented or- 



chards ; aged people and grandsires, in lone 
woods, to which their age is kindred ; and on 
the heirs of fame, the kindlers of high thoughts, 
friends of the oppressed, deliverers of nations, 
bestow the whole wide earth,' with its moun- 
tains and valleys, lakes and running streams, 
and echoing cliffs, as a tomb, a monument, and 
a memorial. 



CITIZENSHIP. 

The colossal event of October was the ex- 
plosion of the grand political fraud-mine* at 
the almshouse in the presence of his honor the 
Recorder, and the city District Attorney. No 
incident of the kind has, within our memory, 
created so general and earnest a commotion 
among the members of all parties, as well as 
among the community of less excitable citizens, 
who belong to none. Whether this was a 
high court of preliminary inquiry, convened 
for great and solemn purposes ; or whether it 
was a mere congress and junto of partisans for 
sinister objects, we shall not inquire. 

Certain leading questions of less doubtful 
character have become involved in the chief 
subject, and of these we shall speak freely, and 
as every right-minded American would desire 
to have us speak. 

The first, and most striking, is the evidence 
this case furnishes of the readiness of the com- 
munity to fall off into parties and party divis- 
ions on any matter that may be presented. 
Now, as we humbly regard it, neither party is 
to be considered as the exclusive friend and 
champion of truth. As far as our humble 
observation extends, neither is to be held ai 
the immaculate and single advocate of just- 
ice. Goodness and right do not inhabit so 
clearly on this or that side of an accurate, 
straight line, drawn by party wisdom or party 
honor. Oh no ! Truth is diffused more like 
the atmosphere, and pervading all regions and 
things, preserves the general soundness and 
purity of the world ; it does not lie heaped up 
in masses, or gathered in overwhelming trea- 
sures within the camp of any chieftain or com- 
pany of political knights-errant. The strong, 
wholesale clamor, therefore, for or against any 
measure or act, is unwise and false to a sound 
general principle ; a qualified and restrained 
advocacy or opposition lurks in the constitution 
of mankind, and in the very nature of things. 

Party divisions, can not, and, perhaps, should 
not be abolished ; but there must arise in the 
progress of events, questions far above all such 
sectarian and narrow feelings ; questions affect- 
ing the foundation of government, and the very 
stability of all institutions. The purity of 
elections is with us just such a question, and 
demands a generous abandonment of party 

*The introduction of voters from Philadelphia at 
the election in New York, in largs numbers, and by 
contract. 



CITIZENSHIP. 



329 



views, and a bold and prompt declaration in 
behalf of good principle, wherever it may show 
itself. A clear, integral, unquestionable ex- 
pression of the popular will and meaning, is 
with the present frame of government to be 
desired, furthered, prayed for above all civil 
blessings. Let the nation speak out ; and ac- 
cursed be he that counterfeits, intercepts, or 
misinterprets its true manly tones. Be a brand 
indelible as life upon him that lends himself 
forthright, or by indirection, to corrupt the 
great franchise. Let him stand in the midst 
of the community, like the first murderer, as 
one who would strike at the life of first prin- 
ciples, the scoff, the utter contempt and loath- 
ing of all men. On his tomb be inscribed the 
national malediction in the bitterest and brief- 
est words that national wisdom and indignation 
can frame ! Let no man who regards his own 
fair fame, or the fair fame and tranquillity of 
his children, palter with this Abaddon of 
political life ; and, on the other hand, let no 
ready accuser or convenient judge lay the charge 
of such countenance lightly on any man's head ! 
Nor let a considerate and all-accomplishing 
people, urge on or assuage the clamor further 
than the strictest ends of true justice require. 

Resolution and prudence should be our coun- 
sel in such emergencies ; and, judging with 
tranquillity, we should condemn and punish 
with terrible directness. 

Regarding a single incident of citizenship — 
a great and noble incident it is true — with 
these feelings, we can not but regard citizen- 
ship itself as a high privilege, and one which 
should not be frivolously conferred or assumed. 
To be an American citizen is to be a free man, 
not merely as far as bonds and captivity are 
concerned, but to enjoy a noble liberty of 
thought and feeling, unfettered by the old and 
customary restraints of more cumbrous forms 
of government. His thoughts have no wall of 
circumvallation built up from immemorial 
times to overshadow and hedge in their liberal 
range. Life is thrown open to him as a fair 
untrodden field, on which to enter, with what- 
ever implements of wisdom, sagacity, fore- 
thought, truth, and fortitude, God and nature 
have granted him. He is more sovereign than 
the highest sovereignty of all old empires ; 
having a mind unawed by past traditions, 
and cheered to its duty by every hope in the 
future ; resting, as it were, on the broad hill 
side of nature, and looking forth, in the eye of 
the sun, on whatever presents itself, with true 
natural impulses, and with a just regard to the 
actual relations of objects. It is not necessary, 
that is to say, it is not inherent in his condition, 
that he should adopt unwise or disproportions! 
views of art, of God, of society, nor, in fact, 
of any truth or set of truths. 

" He sees, as from a tower, the end of all." 

He feels, or he should feel, called on to exem- 
plify humanity, and to render to the world the 



true reading and solution of many vexed prob- 
lems in government and social life. He sits at 
the plain table of uncorrupted truth ; before 
him lies the map of human action, unbroken 
by the track of previous adventurers, or mark- 
ed with conjectural shoals and soundings, the 
sunlight falls clear upon it, and the fresh air 
of heaven breathes on him its true inspiration. 
Is not this a task and service sufficiently great, 
noble, and momentous, to be placed in any 
man's hand ? And would you not suppose 
that a little culture, a little glimmering of civi- 
lization, and some faint approaches to a manly 
demeanor, were needed in him who presents 
himself as an expounder and illustrator of 
these new truths ? 

How much would it ask to perform these ser- 
vices of American citizenship well and truly ! 
What wise research, what profound sagacity, 
and steady temper of soul ! 

Attend our court of naturalization a day or two 
in advance of any coming election, and see how 
nobly, with what a terrible striving toward this 
ideal standard of citizenship, these requisitions 
are met ! If philosophy has cast her robe, and 
taken in its stead a most inviting and frag- 
mentary apparel of foul linen and broken fus- 
tian ; if manhood and civilization have deserted 
broad brows and intelligent features, and taken 
up their abode in uncultured heads and carbun- 
cled faces, then is our county court indeed the 
porch and vestibule of truth — the very gate of 
the republican heaven. 

What glorious elements of citizenship lie im- 
bedded in the rude nature of this man ! What 
cunning and earnest sympathies must this Baeo- 
tian enjoy with Plato, the founder of republics — 
with Harrington — with Hampden that lived, 
with Sidney that died, for the establishment of 
free institutions ! Something, assuredly, of the 
heroic valor that battled it with the tyrant at the 
defile of Thermopolae, beams in his eye ; some- 
thing of the manly fortitude that defended 
Breed's hill, certainly betrays itself in the strons" 
lines of his hard countenance. What Hancock 
sacrificed, what Franklin fabled, what Jefl'er- 
son counselled, what triumphant George Wash- 
ington achieved, must be known to him. Swift 
indeed is our new-born American gentleman's 
apprehension of what truth and duty require at 
his hands in this new country, where his lot is 
now for ever cast. With a steady hand, and 
well-assured of the solemn enterprise in which 
he is embarking all that he has of manhood, of 
hope, and hope of happiness, does lie affix his 
name — or, more likely, the dignified si-^n- 
manual of his " mark," to the oath that 
him for ever from all old-world allegiances, and 
hinds him sternly to the charter under which he 

has preferred to dwell. 

Do we despise the poor, the unlearned, or 
the humble, because we bold this langU 
God forbid ! Is it our wish that honest-hrai It d 
manhood, apparelled, it may he. In ra-:s, and 
held low and cheap in (he world's esteem, should, 
for any reason whatever, be robbed of Ll 



330 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



frage, and made to keep its peace in the pres- 
ence of power, or Avealth, or hereditary scorn ? 
God and all his good angels forbid ! But we 
do desire, as fervently as we can desire any- 
thing, that American citizenship shall not be 
cheapened ; and that it may not be, we would 
hold our countrymen everywhere to a strict ac- 
countability, not only to themselves, but to their 
posterity, for all acts by which it may be en- 
dangered or diminished. If no better barrier 
can be raised for its protection, let us adhere 
religiously to the letter and the truth of the 
standard at present established by law. When 
these ill-omened candidates for investiture with 
the citizen's robe present themselves, let them 
be placed by the side of the measure known to 
the polity of our government, and let us learn 
whether they reach the mark or tower above 
it. Call into court, in the full face of day, on 
every occasion of creating an American citizen, 
some substantial, judicious, and true witness, 
who can swear, with a conscience awake to 
the service it is engaged in, that the catechu- 
men there present has " behaved himself for 
five years last past, as a man of good moral 
character, attached to the principles of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and well disposed 
to the good order and happiness of the same." 

The testifying oath, as is well known, is ta- 
ken, in many cases, by some staunch affidavit- 
maker, for groups of half-a-dozen or a dozen 
applicants at a time. This creature is gener- 
ally a miserable electioneering agent, the tool 
of some party or other, and who swears him- 
self through all that is required of him with 
the steady action of a hardened hackney. Ex- 
tensive and discriminating indeed would be his 
acquaintance with men, if he could, in all these 
instances, furnish the nice testimony required 
by law. Familiar, in truth, to a degree almost 
miraculous, with the actings and doings, the 
noonday and midnight paths of obscure, dark, 
and unnoticed creatures, must this steady-swear- 
ing gentleman be, to give his " Amen" to the 
clerk's voice as he recites this portion of the 
oath. 

But still more marvellous must be his insight 
into the metaphysical operations of the candi- 
date, and in close communion for many days 
and many nights must these two worthies have 
dwelt, ere, we should think, its concluding 
sanction could be safely echoed. 

Ay ! here is a thick, dull, reckless fellow of 
a naturalization agent, infinitely better read in 
the paltriest party journal of the day, than in 
any work of higher morality, who takes upon 
himself to affirm, under the solemn requisitions 
of an oath in open court, that another thick, 
dull, reckless fellow of an applicant for natu- 
ralisation is, forsooth, " attached to the principles 
of the Constitution of the United States I and 

WELL DISPOSED TO THE GOOD ORDER AND HAP- 
PINESS OF THE SAME !" 

The whole picture, as it presents itself to 
our mind, is too broad and Hogarthian to excite 
any feelings but, on the one hand, of hearty 



mirth, or, on the other, of deep detestation and 
lament. 

The individual who volunteers to testify to 
these nice questions of opinion and practice, is, 
ten chances to one, the nightly frequenter of a 
common taproom, where his accurate estimate 
of the character of his friend has been formed 
over occasional pots of cheap beer; and the 
conviction of his attachment to constitutional 
principles, doubtless wrought in sundry lucid 
and logical discussions of the favorite text from 
the Declaration of Independence, that all men 
are born free and equal, particularly the two 
gentlemen in question. 

To say of any man, that he was, of a truth, 
attached to the noble principles of our consti- 
tution, and well disposed to the good order and 
happiness of these United States, knowing tru- 
ly how much was required for the good order 
and happiness of such a government, would be 
to pronounce his highest eulogy. For an Amer- 
ican, born on the soil, reared amid usages and 
habitudes that are daily lessons to his young 
understanding, and taught by all that he sees, 
hears, or dreams, something of the character of 
the government of which he is a pledged sup- 
porter, an enlightened good sense effects much, 
if not all, of what a foreigner must acquire by 
patient research, by anxious questioning, and 
by years of strenuous devotion to the spirit of 
free institutions. Let him not, therefore, take 
upon himself lightly the proud character of 
American citizen ; let him not dare to become 
a legislator for twenty-six sovereignties, to sit 
in the grand councils of free, thoughtful men, 
bearing a large portion of the world's hopes 
and fears upon them, without a grave prepara- 
tion for the duty ! Curses, both loud and deep, 
must wait on him and his, if by any inefficiency 
or violence or mischance of theirs, the world's 
great hope should be obscured or blighted : and 
let us, the native and natural owners and de- 
fenders of the soil, take heed that by no weak 
or idle or misplaced philanthropy of ours the 
same evil issue be not wrought, and that the 
malediction, with double and fearful force, fall 
not on us ! 



EVERY FOURTH YEAR. 

It is pretty well known all over the world bj 
this time, we imagine, that the American 
people indulge themselves every four yean 
with a national entertainment on a very grand 
scale. The chief figures in the divertisement 
are two gentlemen " natural-born citizens, who 
have attained to the age of thirty-five years, 
and been fourteen years residents within the 
United States," who kindly offer themselves as 
objects of playful abuse, elegant invective, 
satiral dissection, and such other intellectual 
pastimes as their fellow-citizens may think 
proper to engage in at their exclusive risk and 
expense. This leads, of course, to many happy 



jUBTH TEAR. 




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332 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



biography assumed the form of very lifelike 
and racy sketches of the characters of the va- 
rious candidates for office. 

But more particularly was great industry dis- 
played in the department of song-writing. So 
melodious an era was probably never before 
known in the whole history of the world. The 
ballad of old Bishop Percy, the lay of the Min- 
nessingers, the rondeau, the ode of Pindar and 
Dryden, were completely eclipsed by the race of 
improvising minstrels that suddenly sprung into 
existence in every quarter of the land. Im- 
promptu was the rule of composition, and the 
bards chanted whatever the gods inspired on 
the spur of the occasion. They did not weary 
themselves with preliminary studies, with curry- 
combing Pegasus, and training and caparison- 
ing him, with great show and outlay of labor, 
for the Parnassian journey. Not they ! On 
the contrary, they stood up right manfully on 
the first barrel that presented, and proceeded 
instantly to do the tafck allotted. They did not 
cudgel their skulls for fine conceits or high- 
flying fancies ; the first word that came was as 
good as Homer or Tyrtaeus, and they chanted 
on, singing and composing in a breath ; and if 
what they uttered fell into metre, so much the 
better ; if not, a thousand or two good bellow- 
ing voices roared the chorus through trium- 
phantly, and bore it beyond criticism. 

Among other things worthy of note, the prin- 
ciple of association seemed during the recent 
canvass to have suddenly acquired an astonishing 
force. The ordinary political gatherings and com- 
mittees could not satisfy the gregarious propen- 
sity. Every possible kind of club was formed. 
A fraternal, a family feeling sprung up among 
politicians, and they were no longer to be seen 
singly, but always in troops and herds of hun- 
dreds or thousands. Among these, visits were 
passed in a truly excellent social spirit ; New 
York making a journey of a hundred miles to 
interchange salutations with Dutchess county ; 
and gentlemen assembling under the delicate 
designation of " Butt-Enders" in Brooklyn or 
Williamsbutgh, exposing their exquisite per- 
sons to the fatigues of a ride of twenty miles or 
more to their brethren on the island, the " Mol- 
ly-hogs" of Patchogue. 

The democratic tendency of the times was 
humorously betrayed in the ornithological and 
other designations which these clubs, in their 
baptismal fervor, saw fit to take to themselves. 
Leaving the national bird, the easjle (who may 
be supposed to have not a few aristocratic and 
monarchical qualities), in the clear upper air, 
they assumed, as the most hideous emblem they 
could fix upon, the great, stupid staring owl, 
the Strix Cunicularia, or burrowing owl of 
Bonaparte, and under his characteristic auspi- 
ces, filled the night with their dreadful screech- 
es and uproar. Rivalling these in happiness 
of title were the gentlemen of the hyaena club, 
who gave the world to understand, by this des- 
ignation, that the fury and savageness of their 
partisanship were by no means to be called in 



question. Then there were the civilized and 
Christian worthies, who, laboring untfer a ter- 
rible propensity to employ their lungs, and who, 
taking pleasure in affrighting quiet citizens by 
the strength of their clamors, carried on their 
trade under the style and appellation of Roar- 
ers. To these are to be added Unionists, 
Faugh-Ballagh boys, the political hussars of the 
rank and file, Tips, North-benders, and a legion 
more of rare, curious, and felicitous description. 
For a time the community seemed to have 
lapsed into the barbarism of the original inheri- 
tors of the soil, and to be striving to restore, 
for a season, the old Indian divisions into tribes 
of every possible, bloody, and ferocious desig- 
nation. Some even had their war-whoop in 
true Indian style, and could give it with a truth 
and energy which satisfied all within hearing, 
of their genuine claim to the savage and barba- 
rian character they had playfully assumed. 
Others, as we have elsewhere hinted, chanted 
heathen and outlandish ditties, with an effect, 
which a Mohawk or Seminole melodist might 
have pined to rival. 

^Let no man suppose, from this light and 
cheerful view of the subject, that we regard 
the recent contest with any other feelings than 
such as deep reverence and respectful con- 
sideration prompt. We look upon a general 
election like that through which we have just 
passed, as the great act of national supremacy. 
We listen to its verdict as to the voice of a na- 
tion by no means feeble, by no means dishonor- 
ed, by no means impaired or cast down. We 
take heed of it as the high periodical trial of 
the constitutional strength and the popular in- 
telligence. No event is — no event can be to 
us, and to all Americans, nor in truth, rightly 
understood, to all the world, of graver import 
than this. Here is the earthquake incident to 
your boasted foundations ; the quadrennial 
spasm that shall test the sinew and heart of 
your apparent vigor. Let us then, we implore 
you, so gird ourselves as to approach these 
grand recurring incidents with increased hope 
and faith, with increased means of encounter 
and triumph. From each conflict with this 
eventful occasion, let us come forth unbroken 
in strength, by all means ; schooled, if it may 
be, how to avoid certain errors in its conduct, 
certain lapses from the spirit that should be 
with us before we enter upon it, and during its 
continuance. If possible, let the people, the 
mass and general people, be so elevated as not 
to need appeals to the eye or the appetite ; nor 
to require enticing emblems or taking devices 
to fix their faith in this party or that. Let us 
bring our political strifes more and more to the 
broad tests of truth ; to expositions of principle, 
and to appeals to the sound hearts of enlighten- 
ed thinkers. This can not be done at once. It 
can not be effected to-day nor to-morrow. 

We do not take it upon ourselves to say that 
all emblems and devices are to be condemned 
and denounced as mere springs and impostures. 
Good hearts and true have been fired, at memor- 



EVERY FOURTH YEAR. 



333 



able times, to noble actions, by the sight of i 
stars, or crescents, or meteors, floating over 
them ; by the hovering wings of emblematical 
eagles, or the bronzed rage of visionary lions. 

By the peculiar power of the imagination, 
such symbols are made to represent, in heroic 
brevity, the faith, the valor, the achievements, 
the whole glowing features of one's native 
land. With gathered force, all that she has 
done, perilled, or suffered, enters his warm 
heart, and stimulates him to put forth the best 
of his strength and manhood. Symbols are there- 
fore needed, in a peculiar crisis, where much is 
to be wrought at the instant, or where the mind 
requires to be raised into a condition of more 
than ordinary intensity and force. But civil gov- 
ernment is no such affair ; that is, in a great 
measure, a matter of plain sense and deliberate 
procedure. Calm and unimpassioned understand- 
ings are required to construe constitutions, to 
examine and discuss questions of administra- 
tion, and to scrutinize and compare the char- 
acters of candidates for office. No heroic ar- 
dor is needed in the performance of these plain 
duties. nThere is no sudden, instantaneous ef- 
fect to be produced, which calls for direct, daz- 
zling appeals to the eye or the ear. Time does 
not press ; months may be taken to form opin- 
ions, and months more to act upon them. The 
enemy does not stand before you to be cut 
down or borne over by one sweep of sabres, or 
a single charge of cavalry. He is to be reach- 
ed at a great distance and by circuitous ap- 
proaches. He is to be conquered by delay, 
which matures opinion ; and to be wrought 
upon by peaceful spells, speaking to him, rea- 
soning with him from the little aulic chamber 
of the ballot. 

It is fair matter of question whether too 
much is not staked on this single cast for the 
presidency. 

Was it intended by the framers of our con- 
stitution that such extraordinary overwhelming 
prominence should be given to the executive 
office? That it should be made the object of 
intense hope, of agonizing apprehension, as it 
now is ? On the contrary, if we read aright 
the policy of the founders of this government, 
it was meant that the whole federal administra- 
tion should advance in a line, occupying an 
equal share of the public jealousy and the 
popular regards. Events have in some degree 
wrested this purpose aside ; the personal char- 
acter of some of our chief magistrates, and in 
other cases, the incidents of their time, have 
caused the general eye to be fixed with too 
great anxiety on this single office, and to asso- 
ciate with its doings the whole conduct of 
government. 2 The president of the United 
States is not, should not be the government of the 
United States. It is folly and madness so to re- 
gard him ; it is treason and sacrilege for him so 
to regard himself.rOn this point the public mind 
has taken a false bias for several years past, 



and with monomaniac violence to truth, has 
wrought innumerable evils by neglecting the 
claims of the other elements of government on 
their attention. Standing singly as he does, 
the president will at all times attract a large 
share of observation and notice ; but alone, un- 
supported or discountenanced by other authori- 
ties, his power for evil is comparatively slight 
and superficial. He can cast arrows of desola- 
tion into the land ; but these failing, the nerve 
that impels them home is utterly wanting, and 
they fall harmless in the midst of the people. 
As recently administered and regarded, the 
presidential arm is clothed with thunder, and 
whatever bolt is shot forth rattles and blazes 
through the whole length of the land, scatter- 
ing dismay, confusion, and ruin. In a tranquil 
and regulated view of this office, these things 
could not be. 

The presidency of these United States is cer- 
tainly a glittering mark ; a grand epoch in any 
man's career to become an historical person- 
age, in the same noble line with Washington 
and Adams. But is not the ambition of our 
greatest intellects too much directed to this 
point ? Is not this office regarded too much as 
the only supreme station of honor and renown? 
To be chief magistrate of twenty-six sovereign 
states is a noble pre-eminence ; but is it nothing 
to be chief Thinker, chief Teacher, or chief 
Poet of the same union ? Are arms and civil 
power to wrest away for ever, from majestic 
learning, from passionate truth, from climbing 
philosophy, the crown and laurels of the earth ? 
We trust not. The sword protects, the trun- 
cheon sustains our chartered privileges as com- 
munities ; but deeper into the nature of man, 
and with a more potent and fruitful energy, 
does the voice of the uninaugurated thinker 
pierce. He labors at the foundations of hu- 
manity ; and there discovers hope and charity, 
fancy full of earnest dreams that foreshadow 
truth, faith in man, reverence, and divine aspi- 
rations, without which all government and so- 
cial administration would straightway crumble 
into chaos and barbarous disorder. 

There are other pinnacles besides the capi- 
tolian, which we desire to see occupied. Office 
and power dazzle the world for a season, and 
shake it with their loud chariot wheels ; but 
they pass away, and the still small voice of the 
printed thought, then unheeded, breaks forth 
on the after age with an almost supernatural 
clearness and force of utterance. The states- 
man is pursued by shouting and tumultuous 
multitudes; while the poor scholar (the mas- 
ter and tyrant of his destiny) is strolling in 
some far-off silent field with ■ single friend. 
The next generation, perhaps the very Mxt 

year, right comes into possession of his own, 
and while thousands ham: on every breath of 
the poet, the poor politician is gone into the 
the land of forgetralneSS, accompanied only by 
the shadow of his renown. 



334 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURTJS. 



THE FIELD DEATH. 

Little Tom Hubble was a miserable wretch, 
a poor, beggarly scamp, and might as well have 
been, for all the provision this world made for him 
in the way of food, raiment, and lodging, a little 
shivering cherub on one of the tombstones, in 
the Gowannus churchyard. It is true, Tom en- 
joyed the reputation of living with a flourishing 
old grandfather, who thought all the world of 
Tom, and who was supposed to do nothing else 
all day but contrive projects how he should live 
on pudding and poultry, be clad in fine linen 
and exquisite broadcloth, and lie down in soft 
beds, with the echo of pleasant stories, narra- 
ted for his special benefit, lingering in his ear 
to sooth his slumbers. Tom, however, who 
had a way of seeing things that was peculiar to 
himself, was pretty well convinced that what 
he discovered regularly, three times a day, on 
a little pine table in the corner of a small back 
kitchen, was a veritable dish of black scraps of 
bread, with two or three dry beans straggling 
about among them ; that the apparel in which 
lie was allowed to endue his paltry limbs when- 
ever he went abroad, was, to be sure, a sort of 
gala dress, made up of motley fragments of the 
old gentleman's cast-off garments, in various 
stages of antiquity and decay — but that his ac- 
tual, in-door, daily garments, consisted of a lit- 
tle more than a small carter's frock, a straw 
hat in a state of decline, and a pair of high 
boots that served for stockings, pantaloons, and 
leggins. 

Besides all this, Tom was either so wonder- 
fully acute or so miserably stupid, as to discern in 
the couch on which these same limbs, so ignomin- 
iously treated in broad day, were stretched at 
night, nothing more nor less than a pallet of 
hard straw, in a little cockloft, with a bag of 
musty bran by way of a pillow. 

Notwithstanding all these little circumstan- 
ces, Tom's grandfather was accounted and held 
by all Gowannus to be a large-souled, spirited old 
gentleman, who knew what became his dignity as 
the oldest inhabitant and freeholder of that re- 
spectable village as well as any man, although 
he did indulge in one or two trifling eccentrici- 
ties, which, if they had been known to the said 
townspeople, might have materially abated their 
respect ; one of which was, that the old gentle- 
man professed to obtain his household supplies 
from sundry friends of his who were in that line 
of business in town, and who chose to show the 
intensity of their affection for him in this sub- 
stantial way ; whereas, the truth was, and this 
the old gentleman knew perfectly well, he was in 
the habit of stealing over to the city when he 
would be least missed, and purchasing, at very 
low rates and from very low traders, cheap ar- 
ticles in a somewhat decayed and questionable 
state of preservation. The other singularity 
which tended to blind the sagacious burghers, 
was a habit of his (as in the case of poor Tom), 
of never presenting himself in public unless in 
full costume, and of a very picturesque and im- 



posing character ; consisting of a venerable 
white broadbrim, a reverend, wide-skirted, blue 
coat, with silver buttons, smallclothes of an ex- 
cellent quality, polished top-boots, and an em- 
phatic cane, with a head as white and bald as 
that of the old grandfather himself. 

Although it will be seen from this that the 
astute commonalty and gentry of Gowannus 
were in the way of being slightly deluded and 
overreached, yet was Tom Hubble inclined to 
look upon it all as a pleasant little entertain- 
ment, with undress rehearsals in the old house, 
and performances in the open air — with the ex- 
ception of the spare diet, and that he thought 
hadn't the slightest perceptible flavor of humor 
in it, but;, on the contrary, was to be held as 
extremely dull, barren, and unsatisfactory. 

With some such reflections passing through 
his mind, Tom sat one morning at his little 
pine table, endeavoring to enliven his dry meal 
with a few grains of salt that he had brought 
in his pocket from an old fisherman acquaintance 
of his, upon his scattered beans, when he was 
suddenly roused by the old gentleman's shout- 
ing in his ear, in a very obstreperous voice : — 

" What the devil are you about, boy ! — put 
ting salt on your beans ?" 

" Yes, this is salt — I believe," said Tom, 
timidly. 

" Are you sure it's salt — you young rascal ?" 
roared the old gentleman. " Isn't it rock-crystal 
powdered, or white sand, or something of that 
sort ? Come, you had better make it out one 
of these two." 

" It's salt — nothing but common table-salt," 
reiterated poor Tom Hubble. 

"Nothing but common table-salt ! — you 
thriftless young vagabond ; you talk of it as 
familiarly as if you had seen it every day of 
your life. You'll be the ruin of me yet, with 
your extravagant ways — I know you will !" 

" No, I won't, grandfather," said Tom, with 
some slight hesitation, as if the boldness of the 
old man's prediction had made him a partial 
believer in what he propounded. 

" Yes, you will — don't tell me you won't," 
said the cross-grained old gentleman. " None 
of your won'ts, and shan'ts, and don'ts, and 
mustn'ts, with me. Your day's over in this 
house, so you may get out as soon as you 
choose." 

Tom stole a glance at his grandfather, and 
then shivered a little ; then he took up a crust 
in his fingers, shivered a little more, dropped 
his crust, and stole another glance ; scarcely 
knowing where he was, or what he was doing. 

" I say you may get out of the house !" shout- 
ed the grandfather. " Isn't that plain Saxon 
English ? Get you gone ; you have devoured 
my substance long enough !" 

Without allowing Tom any great length of 
time to ponder on the true interpretation to be 
given to these passages, the old man stepped 
forward, kicked over the little pine table, scat- 
tering the contents of the dish far and wide 
over the floor; seized Tom himself by the col- 



THE FIELD DEATH. 



335 



lar, and dragging him through the outer room, 
pushed him swiftly into the street. He then 
rapidly closed the door, turned a bolt, and took 
his station at a window which looked out upon 
poor Tom Hubble, and watched the further 
pleasure of that forlorn youth. Poor Tom's 
first motion, on finding himself landed in the 
street, was to turn about and make a survey of 
the edifice, from which it was his impression, 
although he was not sure of it, he had just been 
summarily ejected. True enough, there it stood, 
the same dilapidated, discolored old building, 
with which he had been familiar so many years. 
Yes, and there in the old window was displayed 
a full-length illustration that satisfied him his 
construction of the text could not be far amiss. 
The truth, then, was, he had been turned out 
of his grandfather's house in open day, and there 
stood his grandfather, muttering curses, and 
raising his hands to heaven in imprecations of 
trouble and disaster upon his poor, weak, child- 
ish head ; and what should he do ? 

Tom's first inclination was to go and drown 
himself in a dreary pool, that stood in a cluster 
of hemlocks, beyond the hill ; then he thought 
he would like to fly with the wind into remote 
places, deserts, and wildernesses, where he I 
should be all alone, and never see again the j 
cruel face of that old grandsire of his. He end- ! 
ed by rambling away, like one bewildered, he 
knew not whither, only getting farther and far- 
ther from the village at each step, and sadden- 
ing as he walked. Now and then he paused a 
moment, thinking that he had better go back, 
and falling on his knees before the old man, beg 
his forgiveness with clasped hands and weep- 
ing eyes — he knew not for what — and find shel- 
ter once more under the old roof, and try to be j 
happy in spite of cares, and crosses, and spare : 
meals; but as he gait\ed the brow of the up- j 
land, the good resolution strengthening mo- ! 
mently within him, he ventured to look back at j 
the old homestead (the hover of his boyhood), ! 
and there he discovered, through tears that al- 
most blinded him, his old grandfather still stand- j 
ing, rigid as a statue, in the window, his bald '■ 
head uncovered, and his hands uplifted in the i 
same fixed attitude of malediction and menace. I 
This decided him, and he wandered on. He ! 
reached a sunny little meadow beyond the brow, I 
and there he sat down, and, in spite of his sor- ; 
rows, could not fail to take note of the little 
creatures at his feet ; in truth, never were they 
more dear to Tom than now that he was desert- 
ed of all the world. The high-vaulting grass- 
hopper was foremost, catting all sorts of capers 
in the air ; the solemn cricket was faring to and 
fro in his black cloak, like a friar full of er- 
rands, through all his little pai ish of Greenland ; 
toads — yes, toads, as airy and fantastic as 
clowns at the circus, were caprioling about in 
their spotted jackets ; and large bullfrogs, 
emerging from the spring, came shambling up 
the slope, and with their great eyes B tared at 
poor Tom, as if they felt very anxious to know 
what, it was that troubled him. 



Thus he straggled about all day, in a kind of 
wild dream, made up partly of gloomy images 
of the village life he had fled, and partly of 
pleasanter fancies drawn from what was about 
him. His little heart warmed toward every 
fair object that he saw, and he scarcely passed 
a tree greener than others without feeling what 
happiness there was in this world ; and then, 
again, as the shadow of old sorrows fell upon 
him, it grew as cold and dreary as a stone. 
Night was coming on fast ; Tom had had no 
food all that day; but shelter from the chill air 
and the bleak winds he must have, and accord- 
ingly, after due thought and pondering, he made 
his way with some difficulty into a piece of dark 
woods, far off to the southeast ; and, embower- 
ing himself in a thick shade of bushes, he sought 
rest for his little, weary limbs. 

All that night he lay in the wood, slumbering 
a little at times, and then starting up at sight 
of strange objects that haunted his dreams; in 
truth the whole region seemed, to fanciful little 
Tom, to be full of all sorts of wonderful spec- 
tacles and singular noises. At one time he 
thought he heard a lion's roar, away off in a 
dismal corner that he recollected passing, and 
which, now that he bethought himself, might 
have been a veritable lion's lair; and then he 
imagined that he discovered up in the twilight 
gloom of the tree-tops, great birds of evil omen 
brooding and hovering about, and ready to 
pounce on him with their hungry talons. About 
midnight, however, he was wakened by steps 
passing lightly by, and looking forth from his 
covert, he discovered a coffin borne on poles by 
two men, who seemed dejected as he could 
gather from their bowed heads and slow steps, 
and to be bearing a burden that was heavy to 
their hearts, although light enough it might be 
to their mere manly strength. They seemed, 
too, to have come from a great distance, and to 
have had a gloomy midnight march upon the 
highway, for the coffin was covered with dust, 
and wet with dew. 

" This poor child is dead," said one of them, 
as they passed, " and thanks to God for it ! 
Her dwelling-place was full of strifes, and 
gloom, and sadness; but her grave shall be, I 
promise you, one after her own heart !" 

"Do you think we are pursued ?" asked the 
other. 

"Not at all; not at all!" he answered 
promptly. M He dare not do that ! it would be 
too great a peril even for him to meet a brother 
in this lone wood, by the side of her coffin.* 

" Did she die, then, of a broken heart, as 
people say / are you sure of that V* 

"Come with me to-morrow, after she 
safely in the earth." he answered, " and [ will 
show you the little window out of which the 
poor cirl osed to lean when it was breaking, 
and I "11 point to the grass underneath it, where 
her warm young tears (God make them fruitful 
of remorse to him !) fell, and nsk \ou whether 
it i> not greener, and Udler, and darker too, 
than any that gTOWl near the spot." The 



336 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



young man laid down his end of the hier for a 
moment, turned his back upon his companion, 
and wrung his hands convulsively together. It 
was for a moment only, and resuming his bur- 
den they hurried on. 

This seemed to be a timely lesson preached 
to poor little Tom, and one that taught him 
how, when the great world is slumbering in 
cities and hamlets, when church-towers, and 
mighty squares and thoroughfares are asleep, 
there is sometimes a deep, restless sadness in 
the heart of obscure places, and that men are 
tossed, and vexed, and tormented with wrongs 
that would keep the world awake, if it but 
knew of them. 

Tom felt that he was not alone, even in that 
dark thicket — which he had deemed impervious 
to the track of man — but that other hearts 
were bleeding with his, and that time was 
bringing on the funeral company, and the train 
of mourners as well there as he could in the 
open fields in broad day, or through the village- j 
street on sabbath afternoons. 

When day dawned it wakened through the 
wood many cheerful melodies, that had slept ] 
there all night long, and which, had they but 
spoken in the darkness and gloom, would have : 
sounded like angels' voices to the poor boy ; but I 
were now in the broad day no comfort whatever I 
to him. 

He crept forth from his lodging as cheerless 
as child well could be; nothing moving in his 
mind but a vague desire of returning to the 
village, and making good the name he must 
have lost by his flight, by casting himself at 
the very door-stone of his stern old grandfather, 
and imploring him to come forth and take his 
life, for charity's sake. With this sharp 
anguish at his heart, the boy stood on the brow 
above Gowannus, looking at times to the great 
city beyond the river, and wondering if in all 
its mighty throng there was one poor wretch as 
sad, as hungered, and disconsolate as he. 

By slow, uncertain, timorous steps, he wound 
his way down the slope, and found himself, now 
that the morning had grown into a full bright 
day, standing in an open field or common in the 
very centre of of the village. 

Tom's return, quiet and sad as it was, seem- 
ed to set the little place beside itself; for he 
had no sooner planted a foot on the village 
ground than the whole region was in an uproar. 
Heads were thrust from windows, moping and 
mowing and making faces of disdain and anger 
at him ; fingers were pointed from every direc- 
tion toward his unhappy person, and even the 
village children, who should have felt for little 
Tom's cares and troubles as if they had been 
their own, formed themselves into a mob and 
commenced pelting him at a distance, with 
stones and dirt. 

Tom was no saint, at least no Saint Stephen, 
to submit meekly to this species of martyrdom, 
and might have avenged himself to his heart's 
content on this detachment of his enemies, had 



not his turning about to do so, always produced 
a very sudden and ignominious dispersion of 
the small gentry, who fled pell-mell, crying out 
that Tom — ugly Tom was after them. To be 
sure there was a single cheerful ray in this 
gloomy hour of Tom's trial, for as he stood, the 
centre of all these angry eyes and this shower 
of contumely, a poor old fisherman, a sort of 
crony of his, came up and accosted him with an 
open hand, but having business somewhere or 
other not to be neglected, he was compelled to 
hurry away, and to leave the little sufferer alone, 
with the cold blood rippling about his heart, 
like a tide at sea. 

After a while the fierce eyes were drawn in, 
the admonitory heads ceased to wag, and the 
school- bell called the little scholars away, and 
Tom, weary and sad, and riveted as it were to 
the spot, sat down on a stone, a sort of horse- 
block, and tried to think over the unlucky 
chances of the day, and to sound his own little 
heart to learn from it how he had borne him- 
self in his troubles ; whether as a true-hearted 
noble boy, or as a sad fear-naught and scape- 
gallows. He found nothing there that reproach- 
ed him very sharply ; and then he looked about 
him to see whether natural objects, such as the 
sky, the earth, and the great bay, gave note of 
any sudden change, which might have driven 
men out of their wits, to treat him thus. 

The earth seemed as green and fresh as ever ; 
the little knolls looked as cheerful, and the 
little nooks and valleys as calm and shady. 
The sky had certainly lost none of its bright- 
ness, but stood there as blue, as serene, and 
immovable, as it did the first time he looked uj 
to it ; and there lay the glorious bay, as proud, 
as hospitable, as inviting to great ships, as or 
the first day it smiled on the Half-moon of 
Heinrich Hudson. He did not know that the 
old man had caused me town to believe Iioa 
that vile off-shoot cf his, Tom Hubble, hac 
smitten him, his old grandsire, and spat upor 
him, and fled from him with curses and fiendisf 
looks, like a little wretch as he was. Thi; 
Tom did not know, and so he sat there ai 
image of silent despair, in the midst of all th( 
life and bustle of noonday, plunged in deep 
thought ; when a tall figure, unobserved by 
him, glided from an old dwelling behind, and 
stealing on him unawares, its arm was stretch- 
ed over his shoulder, and ere he could do more 
than discover, in the shadow that fell before 
him, one which he knew, from its often before 
having stealthily marred his boyish sports and 
pleasures — a knife had struck deep into his un- 
quiet little heart, and given it rest at once and 
forever. Unnoticed by any, the figure glided 
back. 

Tom's head declined upon his knees without 
a gasp or groan ; and in that posture the poor 
boy's corpse remained through two hours of 
high noon, neglected by all, and unapproached. 
The grandfather had so darkened the boy's 
character, that not a soul would draw near to 



THE FIELD DEATH. 



337 



the stone where he had been sitting quite as I news must be given to his poor old grandfather; 
desolate, but not as haughty and vindictive, as and will it not break his heart, much cause of 

displeasure as he may think he should harbor 



the sea-eagle on his rock. 

At length, as night began to fall, and the 
business of the day to pause, attention was 
again turned toward the wicked boy ; as he 
was watched for a long time, and not discover- 
ed to stir limb or muscle, censures of his obsti- 
nacy and dreadful temper grew louder and 
louder, until the whole village was fairly em- 
barked in a swelling chorus of invective and 
indignation. 

But when some one, more compassionate or 
observant than others, suggested that he might 
be dead of very shame and grief, or perhaps of 
hunger, the village was perfectly astounded, 
and lifting up its pious hands, cried out that he 
dared not do it ; it would be too much for even 
him. The dissenter who had evoked all this 
clamor, by the audacity of his suggestions, now 
advised them to go and see, and as much as 
gave out, that if he — a sort of professional 
watcher at sick-beds in the neighborhood — 
knew a dead body from a live one, Tom Hubble 
was as ready for a shroud as any man, woman, 
or child at present in that village. Pricked 
and stimulated by the ironical observations of 
this gentleman, three or four formed themselves 
into a detention, and waited upon poor Tom, 
and found him, true enough, as void of life as 
an assistant-preacher or an unfeed attorney; 
much to their confusion and wonder. Every- 
body was shocked and smitten aghast with hor- 
ror and amazpment. and Tom Hubble's charac- 
ter advanced steadily in value as the wonder 
grew. 

"How could it have happened ! at noonday, 
in our most public street, with a hundred eyes 
upon him !" 

Here was wonderment sufficient for half a 
dozen good sized villages ; and Gowannus made 
the most of it. 

The village was, in truth, stunned and be- 
wildered ; and somewhat touched at heart too, 
notwithstanding its pragmatical conduct toward 
poor Tom when living. His good qualities 
came up freshly into many a memory ; and 
little acts of charity — of kind consideration for 
poor creatures — even the little thefts and pil- 
ferings from his grandfather's store, to be be- 
stowed on houseless, foodless wretches, pleaded 
in behalf of the boy's corse, and began to 
gather about it something of a romantic and 
generous interest. 

Some even, now that they remembered all 
that he had been, and the cruel death he had 
died, with that red gash in his bosom, wept 
tears that fell upon his cold heart, and the now 
colder stone on which, they now first unavail- 
incly called to mind, he had sat for hours that 
day, unprotected and forlorn. Hut who was 
poor Tom Hubble's murderer ? Where was he 
— with such lightness of foot, and skill of hand, 
and strength of hate, as to have plunged the 
knife into a young boy's henrt, at broad noon- 
day, unseen — yea, even unsuspected? The 



against poor Tom ? 

Some one was despatched to the old man's 
house; and knocked loudly, but no answer; 
nor to a second, nor a third knock ; and the 
messenger, therefore, made his way into the 
house of himself. 

The first room was empty ; but in a back 
closet or pantry, removed from the tumult and 
noises of the street, he discovered the old 
grandfather bent over a dark chest, and plying 
his fingers with the utmost speed, in counting 
gold and silver coin, which he dropped into the 
chest with gloating eyes, and a jingle that 
seemed to make his heart jump. 

Without heeding the addition to his company, 
the old man kept on counting with great ra- 
pidity and earnestness, and mutteringto him- 
self, until the messenger touched him upon the 
shoulder, and whispered in his ear that Tom 
Hubble was dead ! 

" What say you ?" cried the old man staring 
about him, like one in a dream, " Tom Hubble, 
my little, darling grandson, Tom Hubble, dead ! 
It can't be. You are practising on me. When 
did he die ? Where ? How ?" 

To these questions, the messenger could, of 
course, return none but vague and unsatisfac- 
tory answers ; at which the old man seemed 
very wroth and furious ; glaring upon him with 
wild eyes, and appearing to regard him as an 
idle intruder upon his privacy. Renewing the 
questions in a louder and more preremptory 
voice, and receiving the same replies, he seized 
the unlucky messenger, and, with little ado, 
thrust him forth from the house. 

The messenger had scarcely returned to the 
group gathered about the body of Tom Hubble, 
when the old grandfather was descried moving 
down upon them with great strides ; bearing in 
his hand an uplifted stick, and menacing them 
at a distance with extreme violence. 

As he drew nearer, they retreated from the 
spot, and his eyes fell upon the corse, as it lay 
stretched upon the rock, with the great red 
gash gaping in its breast. For a moment, the 
old man paused and looked wildly round, and 
then he went and sat submissively down by the 
side of the corse, and took its head in his lap, 
as if he would call it back to life with t 
ses and mournful smiles. He sat in this way 
for more than an hour; the villagers standing 
back and gazing on the spectacle with wonder 
and pity. He then drew off' his old wide-skirt- 
ed coat, cast it upon the boy's dead limbs, and 
staggered like one blind or in a bewildering 
dream, back to his dwelling. 

For a long time the old man's house was still 
and noiseless as death itself; the tTOWd had 
gathered again about the fatal spot, when he 
was discovered reaching forth from an upper 
window of his dwelling, and fastening against 

its walls the dead boy's carter's (York, and 
presently, above it, the old melamholy straw 



338 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



hat. He then brought forth from within, a 
decayed old saddle, with a pair of rusty 
stirrups, and hung them above the window on 
a wooden hook ; one by one he thus produced 
every dilapidated, mouldy, and ruinous imple- 
ment that had laid rotting and mouldering in 
corners and closets for half a century, and fixed 
it against the wall, until the whole house-side 
was covered, like some ancient temple, with 
testimonies of famine, close-pinching thrift, and 
lean beggary. Inside out, of a truth, was the 
old house turned, and every one looked on, 
wondering where this phantasy would end. 
This display completed with dangling ox-chains 
and rusted horse-shoes, there was a pause until 
the old man was again seen emerging upon the 
roof, shouldering an old square table, and fixing 
it on its centre, as for his evening meal ; pres- 
ently, scant provisions followed, and, having 
first planted a reel on another corner of the 
house-top, he sat down, in view of all Gowan- 
nus to despatch his thrifty fare. Neglecting 
this employment, he would every now and then 
start up; at one time busying himself with 
great industry in going through the mimicry of 
reeling off yarn and winding it in imaginary 
balls ; at another, carefully shading his eyes 
and looking steadily through the Narrows for a 
long time, as if on a search for some ship in 
which he had a special interest. In this way, 
as long as he could be seen, the old man pass- 
ed from freak to freak ; and when night came 
on he might be discovered for a long time, 
stalking back and forth, like an evil spirit, 
through the gloom, and filling the whole region 
where he walked with an indescribable dread 
and wonder. 

During all that nisht watchers sat by the 
poor boy's corse, which lay upon the rock rigid 
and motionless. The night-dews fell upon 
them thick and fast, but they watched on, 
knowing how sacred a charge was in their 
trust, and feeling how deep indeed, was the 
mystery that brooded over the little spot on 
which they kept their vigils. Perfect stillness 
reigned everywhere, and the village was sepul- 
chred in a deep sleep, through which passed 
from house to house images of deadly murder, 
stern hands upon feeble throats, and stealthy 
knives plucking at the life of innocent young 
bosoms. But a single light pierced the general 
gloom, and that moved restlessly about the 
dwelling of the old grandfather, sometimes 
showing itself at an upper window, and then 
glancing to and fro in the lower chambers of 
the house ; then it would be interrupted by a 
figure passing between, which cast its tall 
shadow gloomily over the spot on which the 
murdered corse was resting. 

The morning brought no light to the mystery, 
although it wrought new changes in the fan- 
tasy of the old man, and seemed to waken in 
his brain whatever strange, uncouth, or raging 
fancies had been slumbering there during the 



night. The moment day dawned he put forth 
his head to know of the watchers whether they 
had seen a flock of crows pass that way ; and 
if they should, to ask them back to meals in 
his name. A moment after it was again forth, 
and he wished them in the Lord's name, and 
as they loved him, to catch him a long-nosed 
weasel, and hang it on a pole at the end of his 
house to scare away goblins and witches. Then, 
after getting out at the window, and sitting in 
the casement with his legs dangling down for 
half an hour or more, he would suddenly start 
back, and throwing himself at full length on 
the floor, would lie there as if in a torpor for a 
long space. In the mean time the preparations 
for the boy's funeral proceeded, all in the open 
air, for among other freaks the old man had 
denied it entrance, standing at his door and 
raising his hands with a wild look against the 
bearers ; but when it was laid cleanly and 
silently on the bier, and was ready to be borne 
to the grave, he rushed forth, and seizing one 
end of the tressels, vowed that he would carry 
the child to his burial. 

All along the way some mad antic or other 
escaped him, which would seem to denote that 
his brain had been shattered by the poor boy's 
dreadful death ; none venturing to cross his 
wildness, withheld either by fear or reverence 
of his sorrowful age. At one time he would 
arrest the procession in mid career, and stay it 
till he could pluck up long blue grass and 
bunches of field clover to cast upon the 
coffin; and then clutching it up, he would 
hurry forward at such a pace as to throw 
the whole train into disorder and strange con- 
fusion. 

When at length they had reached the grave, 
the old man, dropping his end of the burden 
with such suddenness as to nearly overturn the 
coffin, stepped hastily forward, and bidding the 
diggers stand aside, struck the spade deep in 
the earth, and plying it swiftly, soon finished it 
to its very bottom. 

This done, he drew back ; and the attendants 
who had stood apart regarding him in wonder 
and surprise, approached and lowered the coffin 
gently to its appointed place, which was scarce 
accomplished, when the old man again step- 
ped swiftly forward and cast a huge stone down 
into the grave; giving them to understand that 
it was an anchor which would steady the coffin 
in the earth until judgment-day, when it would 
surely have its doom. The grave was speedily 
filled, the turf duly levelled, and the company, 
saddened and amazed at all they had seen, turn- 
ed away, leaving the grandfather standing hard 
by alone. 

The last time they looked back from the 
highway, they discovered the old man walking 
rapidly to and fro along the grave, and stamp- 
ing at times with savage fury on the earth, as 
if he regarded the poor boy buried there as his 
deadliest foe ! 



THE SCHOOL-FUND. 



339 



THE SCHOOL-FUND. 

Looking directly at the heart of the subject, 
we must frankly confess, that no question of 
greater moment has arisen among us than the 
recent application of the Roman church for a 
portion of the joint school-fund of this state and 
city, for the use of eight Catholic schools, gov- 
erned according to the creed and discipline of 
that religious body. The petitions for this pur- 
pose have been addressed to our city council ; 
have been discussed and argued before them at 
great length ; and now that the case is fully 
before-us, the grounds of this remarkable ap- 
plication seem to be these : 

First ; a want of confidence on the part of 
the petitioners in the Public School Society of 
this city, and in their mode of conducting the 
business of education in the schools in their 
charge. 

Secondly ; a desire to procure from the mu- 
nicipal government, an appropriation of funds 
for the support of schools for the education of 
Catholic children, who could not be conscien- 
tiously intrusted to the teaching of the common 
schools now in use. 

The want of confidence in the School Society 
is enforced by charges of incompetency ; treach- 
ery in the performance of their trust ; " caus- 
ing the pupils to become untractable, disobedi- 
ent, and even contemptuous, toward their pa- 
rents — unwilling to learn anything of religion 
— as if they had become illuminated, and could 
receive all the knowledge of religion necessary 
for them, by instinct or inspiration." 

A further topic under this prominent head, 
appeais to consist in the regret of the petition- 
ers that there is no means of ascertaining to 
what extent the teachers in the schools of the so- 
ciety carried out the views of their principals, on 
the importance of conveying ** early religious 
instruction" (which the petitioners modestly 
represent as heretical and infidel) to the sus- 
ceptible minds of the children. That is to say, 
as we understand it, the petitioners feel quite 
competent, in one of their accusations, to de- 
cide as to the minutest results of the instruc- 
tion given in common schools ; namely, that it 
fabricates fanatics, zealots, and little Lutheran 
dogmatists ; and in another, immediately at its 
heel, and just as open to inspection, they are 
stone-blind, and capable only of giving utter- 
ance to a very profound inuendo. The pe- 
titioners had the good fortune to hit upon anoth- 
er capital topic of declamation, and we blame 
them for not making more of it. 

It is suggested that the common school sys- 
tem is a dreadful thing for the children of the 
poor ; yea, it is artfully contrived, the petition- 
ers believe, to deprive them of the benefits of 
education ! The poor, therefore, as the peti- 
tioners very ingenuously argue, naturally and 
deservedly, withdraw all confidence from it. 
What a gold-mine is this that we have struck up- 
on in the very centre of Zahara, the very last 
place in the world where one would be looking 



for ingots and solid wedges of the precious met- 
al ! How this argument in behalf of the poor — 
the children of the poor — rings on the tongue ! 
It has the true jingle, there can be no doubt of 
that ; and we are surprised that Messieurs, the 
petitioners, have not displayed more activity in 
circulating it. Holding ourselves subject to 
their supreme displeasure, as clippers of true 
coin, we must stale a fact or two as to this 
very remarkable withdrawal of the confidence 
of the poor. 

The whole number of children between five 
and sixteen in the state of New York, in 1837, 
was five hundred and thirty-nine thousand sev- 
en hundred and thirty seven ; and the number 
instructed, five hundred and twenty-eight thou- 
sand nine hundred and thirteen ; leaving a mere 
fraction of a fiftieth or sixtieth uninstructed 
throughout the whole state. Coming nearer to 
the question, we find that of sixteen thousand 
children taught at the public schools in this 
city, one thousand four hundred and eighty- 
eight, or about one tenth, are the children of 
laborers ; one thousand four hundred and sixty- 
one, or nearly another tenth, are the children 
of widows; nine hundred and forty-five, shoe- 
makers; five hundred and two, cabinet-makers ; 
four hundred and sixteen, masons ; five hun- 
dred and seventy-nine, tailors ; four hundred 
and ninety-three, blacksmiths ; while of clergy- 
men there are but thirteen ; of doctors, forty- 
four ; lawyers, twenty-five ; and sundry per- 
sonages who see fit in census-tables, tax-gath 
erers' books, and subscription-lists, to return 
themselves gentlemen, are responsible for twenty 
six. These figures convey, we trust, a quiet 
rebuke to the petitioners, which should not be 
lost on them, unless they are determined to be 
deaf to the despotic voice of simple addition. 

We come now to the second topic — the teach- 
ing of the children of the petitioners can not be 
conscientiously intrusted to the common schools. 
This charge is of the true Janus complexion ; 
at one time it is alleged that the common 
schools are infidel, utterly void of religion ; at 
another, they are ultra-Protestant ; now Janus 
wheedles us with the great length and demure- 
ness of his Quaker or Presbyterian physiogno- 
my ; and then he alarms and terrifies us horri- 
bly by the distortions and grimaces of his hard, 
unbelieving countenance. Shifting and turn- 
ing, and winding itself out of this syllogism in- 
to that ; taking now one disguise, and now 
another, : we confess we can discover in the 
whole of this application, nothing but a zeal- 
ous, obstinate, and persevering purpose of using 
the public money for the furtherance of a cer- 
tain class of religious tenets, and the advance- 
nien by the most strenuous agency, of the inter- 
ests of an ecclesiastical corporation. It is, or 
appears to be, their conviction, that there can 
be, and their determination that there shall be. 
no schools without distinct religious beliefs— 
without their, creed, their paternoster, theii 
surplice, and their basins of holy water. 

There is a cltSI of people, we are aware, to 



340 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



whose imaginations man can never present 
himself without his prayer-book, his collection 
of psalms, and his Sunday hat. It is impossi- 
ble for them, by an unfortunate law of their j 
nature, to contemplate him in any other than 
his strictly religious and pew-holding character. 
This, it seems to us, is narrow and unjust. 
There is a world outside of the walls of the 
sanctuary. There are many acts into which 
religion does not, can not enter. There can 
be no doctrinal truth in the structure of a clock 
— though it may moralize as wisely as the best 
homilist of them all ; and but a slight portion 
of evangelical spirit in a pair of honest house- 
hold bellows, for instance, although its lungs 
may blow as round a blast as any divine in the 
land. There is no such thing known among 
the plain, homely people of every-day life, as 
Catholic carpenters, or Presbyterian bottlers of 
beer, or Swedenborgian makers of windmills. 
One of Dr. Nott's stoves would dispense, we 
imagine, no more heat to an heretical Roman- 
ist, fire- deserving though his sins might be, 
than to a sturdy and conscientious Congrega- 
tionalist of the true orthodox complexion ; nor 
do we think that Professor Olmsted's patent 
would exhibit a greater alacrity in consuming 
a dissenting Baptist, than a full conforming 
Churchman. 

It is the purpose of the common schools to cre- 
ate citizens and not Christians. Citizen is a low- 
er degree, it may be, in the same school with 
Christian; and out of the wise and just per- 
formance of social duty — of obligation to men 
in communities — may spring, in due season, the 
higher order of sacred, Christian character. 
The Christian includes the citizen ; but who is 
it that tells us, because this child, this little 
creature of the public goodness, has not been 
born with the vision of an angel he shall not 
be allowed to see at all ; that unless his little 
eyes are made to look direct down the optical- 
glasses of this orthodoxy or that orthodoxy, he 
shall lie in the cradle of a helpless and idle im- 
becility all his life ? 

In this great question, the community, im- 
bodying itself in all its majesty and collected 
force, has a voice above all sects, all domina- 
tions, powers, and principalities. It demands 
for itself life without discord; it pleads for 
peace, free from controversies and schisms — 
that the great heart may be calm and serene, 
whence issue the social currents by which its 
children are nurtured and sustained. 

It is not pretended — there is no charge against 
the School Society, as Mr. Hiram Ketchum sug- 
gests — that it has not performed the duty of 
furnishing a good, common, ordinary, literary 
education — that it has not given what it was 
bound to give — that it has not enabled the chil- 
dren to read, and write, and cipher. The pe- 
titioners demand more. Their ambition is not 
to be squared and measured by the ambition, 
humble and just though it be, of the other free 
citizens of this state. They clamor for higher 
nutriment ; they stand on tiptoe, above all their 



ib- 
the 
:en 
ird 
.ri- 
gs, 
icy 
ms 



fellow-citizens, aspiring to catch glimpses of a 
celestial sapience denied to the vision of the 
little scholars, and the adult trustees of the 
public school. '* Yea, it would appear from one 
view of the subject, as we have already sug- 
gested, that the petitioners desire to have their 
peculiar religious tenets taught and disseminated 
at the public cost ; that they claim the peculiar, 
and, in this country, extraordinary privilege, 
of dipping into the state treasury for the sup^ 
port and furtherance of an ecclesiastical estab- 
lishment. They knew that the constitution of the 
land, the spirit of free institutions, stood between 
them and their object, and yet they push forward 
with all the vehemence of clamorous memorl 
als, popular excitements, and public meetings, 
toward its attainment/! Why, then, this urgenc; 
of petitions ? They must have sought, it see 
to us, one of two results. Either, firstly, the sue 
cess of their application, from the show of num- 
bers by which it was countenanced, in the very 
face of all constitutional objections ; or, sec- 
ondly, the disruption of the entire school sys- 
tem, not only here, but throughout the state, by 
means of a plausible outcry against its actual 
or assumed abuses. No false motive may have 
mingled in the attempts by which these results 
were to be accomplished. The petitioners may 
have been sincere, honest, patriotic. That we 
leave with God and their own secret thoughts. 
For the wilful violator of our constitution and 
established liberties, there is but one answer, 
and that is to be had in the field ; but we pity, 
with the regard of a steady and sincere com- 
miseration, the man or set of men who would, 
in sober reason, attempt by any means, or un- 
der any assumption whatever, to disband the 
five hundred and forty thousand youth of this 
state, who receive instruction at the public 
schools ; who could look calmly on, while the 
heat of an intolerant zeal was dissolving the 
bands that knit them together into one large, 
innocent, and growing company ; and could see 
them turning sorrowfully away from the old 
district schoolhouse, where some hope, some lit- 
tle ambition, had begun to dawn upon their 
minds, back to the squalid hut, or the cheap 
farmhouse, or the dark alley, from which all 
such hope, all such ambition, must be hence- 
forth excluded for ever ! 

We hear much of conscientious scruples, in 
this discussion. To what purpose has con- 
science just now become nice and scrupulous ? 
What portentous shape hath the goblin taken 
just at this time to shake its delicate fibres? 
Reading, writing, and the use of the globes ! 
The little mimic ball, that humbly represents 
our planet, swarms with direful hieroglyphics ; 
the twenty-six letters have formed themselves 
into a terrible regiment of black dragoons, and 
the unpretending school-slate, is one of the 
devil's cards in this profound game that is 
played to ensnare consciences and entrap the feet 
of the unwary. We can not say that we feel an 
extraordinary respect for any man whose consci- 
entious scruples are found travelling on this road; 



THE SCHOOL-FUND AGAIN. 



341 



we are rather inclined to commend him to a dark 
lantern and the crutch of an octogenarian. 
Daylight and a swift pace, that keeps abreast 
of social rights, are no pleasures of his. 

Conscience, sitting serenely in the breast of 
man, sagacious and austere, and lifting her ter- 

iole front against whatever debases, obscures, 
or mars the soul, inherits a noble realm of duty 
from which she can not be drawn to do task- 
work for hire, or favor, or the furtherance of a 
doubtful cause. She inspires scruples that 
speak out, in very audible tones, against the 
oppression of tyrants, the crafts of priests, the 
violences of wicked men, and not against the 
rights and immunities of humble children, pen- 
sioners on our bounty and justice for a few 
words of healthful knowledge. Doth conscience 
stand in the portal, rebuking common schools ? 
What is there in all their wise and plain opera- 
tions at which she can be justly affronted ? The 
common school recognises a God, a conscience, j 
and Savior ; a Being that holds the ends of the 
wide universe together ; a tribunal that ar- 
raigns the crimes and vices of men ; and a me- 
diator, pleading and interceding between the 
two. A Creator and a judicial spirit within us, 
all men will admit ; and if any say they can 
not take cognizance of the great head of the 
Christian church, to them we make answer, in 
a merely secular view of the case, that it is 
through the imagination the heart is purified ; 
and whenever they can present to our contem- 
plation a nobler, lovelier imase, and one more 
likely to arrest the regards of a wise and pure 
soul, we will, if the sternness of their exactions 
so require, have our Savior depart from the 
consecrated school-room, and hail with joy and 
earnest acclamation the advent of the glorious 
substitute. 

We are not the apologists of the system of 
common schools. We are not even advised 
that it needs apologists or advocates. If it has 
errors and defects, let them be amended and 
removed ; but unless objections to it more man- 
ly, and cosent, and more consonant to what has 
been considered the spirit of American insti- 
tutions, than those urged by the petitioners in 
this ill-advised and unwarranted application 
can be advanced, we say, let it stand, grounded 
as the pyramids. Let it spread its wide base 
until it embraces the utmost verge of society; 
let its foundations be struck deeper and deeper, 
until they shall be known to rest on the srreat 
heart of the community ; and let its turrets and 
its summoning towers ascend until they are lost 
in a tranquil sky, objects of steady admiration, 
exciting hope, and cheerful regard to all people 
that lie in their shadow, and within sound of 
the tuneful voices that echo from their walls ! 



THE SCHOOL FUND AGAIN. 

It is the business of zealots and sectaries, 
as all the world knows, to be on the constant 
22 



hunt and look-out for a vantage-ground, for 
some little plot of the wide domain of passion 
and prejudice, that may be reclaimed for pri- 
vate culture and advantage. This purpose is 
accomplished, sometimes clandestinely, some- *" 
times by creating an issue, in which they cause 
themselves, by a melo-dramatic dexterity of 
posture and aspect, to be regarded as maligned 
and persecuted* The tactique of the gentlemen 
in question — the humble petitioners for a por- 
tion of the school fund of New York — seems, 
however, to lie in the assumption of a tone and 
attitude of perpetual demand and requisition ; 
to be constantly claiming, and in no very feeble 
or doubtful tone, some right or privilege that is 
their due, and which, so they protest and assev- 
erate, it is a burning shame they are kept out 
of. They begin, perhaps, moderately enough ; 
they object, it may be, at first, merely to a 
shoe-tie. The tie isn't in very good taste, it 
must be confessed, and had better be altered ; 
and so it is, to oblige the projector. Then 50U 
must change the fashion of 5'our hat, the cut 
of your coat. Then they get a degree closer, 
and require that you shall not wear your natural 
hair, but a bob-wig of their contrivance, and 
for which they hold a patent. Next, they would 
have you sway your body, thus and 30, when 
you see a gentleman in a white gown, and 
hear him reciting something out of the heathen. 
They next require of you to be a little more 
guarded in your language ; not to make quite 
so free with your spiritual superiors, and to 
bear in mind what is written in the fathers, 
or in a certain tract that they can mention, 
concerning the authority of those holding from 
the Pontiff. Then they would like to have you 
conform your mind — an easy metaphysical pro- 
cedure — to the received doctrines, dogmas, and 
creeds of the church ; and in the event of your 
declining to adjust your thoughts by the stan- 
dards placed before them, you are invited out 
one clear sunshiny morning to take a ramble 
(with a goodly retinue of attendants and body- 
guard at your heels) to one of the public 
squares, pronounced a knave and a heretic in 
the face of day, and ere you can fairly discover 
what it's all about, they have given you over 
to the devil, and you are roasting and crackling 
in the flame, as merrily as a Christmas pi?. 

How is this extraordinary consummation 
effected ? Simply by considering you ns an 
idiot, without a soul or a conscience; quietly 
setting aside all your common-sense notior 
surplusage and impertinence ; and by claiming 
for themselves the most refined sense of right 
and wron?, the most scrupulous and delicate 
moral convictions. It is an ordinary trick of 
self-seekers in society to secure to themselves 
immunities and privileges, by professing an 
extraordinary Btyueamishness of stomach, which 
relucts at anything less delicate than the 
bird's rump; a nervous dislike of drai 
which embowers them comfortably be 
ladies on a sofa ; a constitutional susceptibility 
of vision, which is offended at the glare oC nu- 



342 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



merous lights, and which carries them home to 
bed as soon as the oysters and game are out of 
the way. These gentlemen always labor under 
the heavy affliction of conscientious scruples ; 
constitutional impediments to enjoyment. Of 
agitation, they make a religious duty, part of a 
religious system. By constantly disturbing and 
alarming the community, they at length acquire, 
over its pursuits and objects, the influence 
which is conceded, out of mere weariness and 
physical exhaustion, to men of a restless and 
troubled temperament. 

r The present application is the boldest at- 
tempt, within our knowledge, on the part of a 
religious body, to interfere with our municipal 
affairs. The effort to procure a portion of the 
common school fund for private and sectarian 
uses, is nothing else than an invasion of the 
educational police, as it may be properly called, 
of the metropolis ; an attempt to break down 
one of the strongest muniments that law and 
civil order have erected in our midst. 

This is, in all probability, as resolute an 
effort as ever can be made to secure an appro- 
priation of the fund for improper objects. The 
original petition strikes clearly home at the 
purpose in view ; it was supported and enforced 
by some of their most ingenious and skilful de- 
baters ; and emanated from a body, whose num- 
bers authorize them to say, that one third of 
the vagrant children, defrauded of instruction 
by the plan of the school society, are theirs ; 
and who will, therefore, rest content with noth- 
ing less than a leonine division of the booty. 
The fund, the fund in a currency of their own 
— they will even name the very marking of the 
bills — applied as they choose to require — they 
will have or nothing. 

- Through every thoroughfare, you will see 
hordes of little, tattered, unhatted creatures ; 
the very champions of raggedness, whose flag- 
like garments flutter in every wind, and pro- 
claim the triumph of a natural instinct for 
streets and open yards, over the seductions of 
tasks and school-rooms ; these are the parishion- 
ers of the good Roman bishop, who vindicated 
their condition as one infinitely above the arti- 
ficiality and heathenism of a public school. 

Joyous, rampant, with all the little smiling 
seeds of heroic viciousness, lurking in their 
young bosoms, ready one day to bear the fruit 
of the stealthy or the bloody hand, and to blos- 
som in dark alleys and by-ways, where crime 
patrols day and night ; this is a more pleasing 
field of contemplation, than walls darkened 
with alphabetic characters, teachers, that, at a 
given stipend, inculcate infinite heresy, without 
so much as knowing it, with a comfortable cli- 
mate, of stoves in winter, and sunny holydays 
between schools, out of doors in summer. 

" Is it necessary to teach infidelity ?" asks 
the Right Reverend advocate of the petitioners, 
before the common council. " It does not re- 
quire the active process. To make an infidel, 
what is it necessary to do ? Cage him up in a 
room, give him 3 secular education, from the 



age of five years to twent3'-one, and I ask you 
what he will come out, if not an infidel 1" 

Between these trowsered and turbaned little 
Turks without, and the rank and obnoxious, 
but, at the same time, well-taught and clean- 
apparelled infidels within, we admit it may be 
a sore trial to choose ; but we must be allowed 
to confess, Avith due deference to the good 
bishop, that if he be right in his view of secu- 
lar education, and in insisting, that the state 
should contribute to a proper religious training 
of her youth in sects ; we are forced to confess 
that our government stands on no foundation 
whatever — rather on a foundation of rolling 
stones — and that the first tolerably muscular 
arm pressed against it, must, of necessity, 
throw it clean over, and tumble it among the 
rubbish of decayed states and mis-governed em- 
pires. If there can be no secular education, 
there can be no state. 

In sober truth, we. do not consider it neces- 
sary to inquire, at present, whether religion is 
an essential element of a complete and mature 
education. We oppose the petition, simply on 
the ground that it seeks to convert a tax, laid 
by the state or city government, to a religious 
and sectarian object. 

If the public school society, as is asserted, 
were a monopoly ; if it be irresponsible to the 
people ; if it fail to educate the children of the 
poor, it could not affect the view of the ques- 
tion which we feel bound to take. All these 
considerations would operate most powerfully 
in procuring a reform of the school system in 
this city, but are by no means arguments that 
a corporation (one employing a public fund for 
religious objects) of a still more obnoxious 
character should be erected. 

On this distinct position should all applica- 
tions of the kind be met. It seems to us al- 
most waste of time, to inquire into the matter 
more nicely. That the present application has 
been listened to calmly ; met in protracted ses- 
sions of the city council and the state senate, 
by able men, in careful debate, and at length 
allowed to become a question in nominating 
committees, are proofs of patience and liberal 
forbearance, that could scarcely have been ex- 
pected from the supposed eagerness and haste 
of our American temper. 

If the whole organization of the public 
school society is to be changed, because it does 
not square with the idiosyncracy of a certain 
class of citizens — a minority, in point of num- 
bers, a miserable entity in tax-paying capability 
— why should not our entire municipal condition 
be changed ? 

The Jews, and with very great show of just- 
ice, too, may insist on keeping open shop on 
Sunday ; cause a session of aldermen to be 
called at the hall, to consider some pressing 
grievance ; order the omnibuses out (for one or 
two of them may seek to go a journey to Chel- 
sea), and fall into a horrible ferment should all 
other citizens decline to take down their shut- 
ters and proceed to their avocations. The 



THE SCHOOL-FUND AGAIN. 



343 



Quakers will at once, and rightly enough, dis- 
band the military companies. The Cameroni- 
ans or Covenanters, will destroy the ballot-box- 
es and have no voting under a government 
which does not publicly recognise the Christian 
religion. The Seventh-day Baptists — coming 
a little in conflict, it must be admitted, with 
their Hebrew brethren — will insist that the om- 
nibuses be all laid up ; the drivers taken down 
from their seats, and put away in a mow or 
manger, to enjoy their sabbath slumbers ; would 
send the city fathers home, to apparel them- 
selves in a garb suited for church and the grave 
duties of the diaconate ; and have every bow- 
window made close as a tomb. Nay, further ; 
we can not see why the face of the city itself 
should not be subjected to constant changes, to 
accord with the temper or whim of any project- 
or, if only sufficiently clamorous, whatever. The 
conscientious mathematician may demand that 
our public squares shall all be laid out in octa- 
gons and rhomboids ; the oil-dealer, of an ex- 
pansive soul, may suggest the doubling of the 
public lights, and a revival of the exploded cus- 
tom of embellishing the mayor's residence with 
a pair of lamps ; the delicdte-minded tailor, in- 
sist that the city watchmen shall be put on the 
patrol in gaiters, and the latest Parisian curve- 
tailed coats ; then, the architect, pricked by 
scruples of conscience, may say that there is 
no religion in square church-towers, and cry 
out, with a lusty throat, for pointed spires, with 
the good gilt ball and weather-vane at top. 

There is reason, truth, urgency, in these lat- 
ter, as well as in the earlier requirements ; but, 
casting down the Public School Society, in 
place of the old, disorderly pagan-breeding or- 
ganization, what system i3 to be substituted ? 
And how are the objects of a new mission to be 
accomplished ? 

They are " to be effected by depriving the 
present system, in New York, of its character 
of universality, and exclusiveness, and by open- 
ing it to the action of smaller masses, whose 
interests and opinions may be consulted in their 
schools, so that every denomination may freely 
enjoy its ' religious profession' in the education 
of its youth."* 

The secretary, the coryphaeus of the new or- 
der of things, would fain map out the metropo- 
lis into an infinite number of little plots and 
subdivisions, each with a characteristic reli- 
gion and discipline, under the governance of 
its own priests and teachers ; here a little scar- 
let patch of Romanists, there a blue one of 
Presbyterians ; a water-tinted subdivision for 
the Baptists, a sable plot for the African 
freeholders, a deep red and perdition-colored 
section for the favorers of endless punish- 
ment. 

Now, does this learned gentleman, does any 

* Report of the Secretary of State upon memorials 
from the City of New York, respecting the distribution 
Of the Common -School moneys in that city, referred to 
him by the Senate.— Albany, April 2(5, 1841. 



citizen, of a taxpaying respectability of under- 
standing, imagine that a community so diverse 
and heterogeneous, could, by possibility, hold 
together a twelvemonth ? could last even 
through a single charter election ? 

There is no ground on which a community 
stands so comfortably together, as that of a 
common system of education for the mass ; and 
whoever, by whatsoever indirection, would 
abolish or remove this, is, in truth, an enemy 
to society, and virtually proclaims the law of 
his own will and interest superior to the gen- 
eral welfare. 

By what lines Mr. Spencer proposes to dis- 
tinguish and separate his imaginary districts of 
conscientious friends of education, we are at a 
loss to conjecture. There are to be parishes, 
nice, charming sections and sub-sections, occu- 
pying a certain breadth or square dimension of 
the metropolis, in which the nervous advocates 
of sectarian instruction are to enjoy the advan- 
tages of the new system ; to elect their own 
officers ; to select their own teachers ; and to 
take to themselves the immeasurable luxury of 
school-books, in which Ignatius Loyola and 
Caesar Borghia are, as is proper, always spoken 
of in respectful terms. But let us consider, if 
one of the new academies dominates over a cer- 
tain tract of city ground, it draws into its fold 
all that fall within its bounds ; but are we 
sure they will come ? May there not be, now 
and then, a stubborn recusant, a headstrong 
Protestant, perhaps, in a Catholic school-dio- 
cese (set apart by the most dexterous and accu- 
rate survey of the secretary), who can not be 
made to understand exactly why his child 
should be taught to believe in the pope because 
the Romanist is so delicately conscientious as 
to withdraw his faith from the old public school 
system. The Protestant may claim his right to 
swear by the public school society, quite as 
strenuously as his Catholic friend to invoke the 
Virgin, and to say yea and nay by the pater- 
noster. 

Who shall run lines for the secretary, so as 
to bring in all that are of a mind, and nicely 
avoid striking anywhere against prejudices, re- 
ligious whims, or, so called, conscientious 
scruples ? 

" If that society had charge of the children of 
one denomination only," says the secretary, 
" there would be no difficulty. It is because it 
embraces children of all denominations, and 
seeks to apply to them all a species of instruc- 
tion which is adapted only to a part, and which, 
from its nature, can not be moulded to suit the 
views of all, that it fails, and ever must tail, to 
give satisfaction on a subject, of all others, the 
most vital and the most exciting.* 1 

This seems to us involve the fatal misappre- 
hension (to call it by its best name), on which 
the application for a division of the fund i^ 
founded, namely, the notion that the Public 
School Society is, or should be, a religions cor- 
poration. Now, its objects ami purposes, if 



344 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



we understand them at all, are expressly secu- 
lar. Other they could not be, unless in direct 
contravention of our whole social compact. 
With such a view of their duty, we could have 
no school system, either district or metropoli- 
tan. The state can not know religion, save in 
one or two cardinal acts of worship, in its pub- 
lic conduct. But it can and will apprehend so- 
cial necessities, that operate as links and liga- 
ments in holding the community together. An 
education, essentially and primarily secular, is 
one of these. An important aim in any system 
of instruction provided by the state, would be to 
furnish a mass of ideas — a platform of general 
information — on which all could meet in har- 
mony, and with a perfect concordance of senti- 
ment and opinion. 

That our government is republican, would 
be one of these; that it is a government of 
opinion, and not of superior strength and force, 
another; that it is a government allowing the 
widest liberty of thought and utterance, with- 
in the limits of good order, is another and vital 
sentiment. 

That there was a council of Nice once ; that 
Martin Luther bearded the pope (although an 
important historical circumstance) ; that Cran- 
mer was burned ; that the Geneva model of 
church government was first recommended to 
the Scotch in 1560, it cares nothing. The mo- 
ment it listened to narratives like these, it 
would lose its dignity and character as a state, 
and would become, from that time forth, either 
a religious commonwealth, which is quite 
doubtful, or, most probably, a field of furious 
encounter, in which bigot would hunt down 
bigot, and sectary fly at the throat of sectary, 
with all the spirit and animation that belong to 
controversial feuds. 

~< All that remains for the state to do, there- 
fore, is to waive away, with a mein of majestic 
rebuke, conscious of the grave charge intrusted 
to her hand, all that would fain approach her, 
either in menace or supplication, for favors 
that conflict with this. This is the highest and 
noblest favor she can confer on her children. 
To give them the best, the purest secular in- 
struction in her power, free from all taint of in- 
justice or unkindness, toward this class or that; 
subject, of course, to whatever of frailty and 
uncertainty in attaining its objects, is incident 
to whatever is human. Let her not be for a 
moment lured aside from the great path of duty 
she is pursuing. Her march is on the open 
highway; and however pleasing or attractive 
may be the pastures of a selecter and diviner 
knowledge, offered to her view by the magic 
lights of one school or another of philosophers, 
self-seekers, or truly good Christians, let her 
keep on her way, moving along with an ear 
and an eye, quick and apprehensive, for what- 
ever belongs to her character as a state, bat 
deaf and unseeing, where any would presume to 
make of her a gatherer of tithes, or an umpire 
between contending sects. 



THE UNREST OF THE AGE. 

Ours is the age of suicide and mysterious 
disappearance. Some Jacob May or other go- 
ing forth on a plain mercantile enterprise, 
thinks proper, for his private sport and enter- 
tainment, to hide himself for a season from the 
search of his friends ; puts the police on the 
look-out ; causes the river to be dragged ; cre- 
ates a horrible tumult of newspaper para- 
graphs all over the country ; and, finally, turns 
up some quiet morning, walking the streets of 
New York or Philadelphia as placidly as if 
nothing had happened. 

The truth is, custom and social usage sit 
hard upon men; and they strive to escape 
from them by every possible device and self- 
delusion. Some fly off into remote countries, 
and wander over deserts and burning sands to 
be free ; others penetrate into remote seas, and 
sit down by shores where the tyranny is more 
tolerable because it wears a different garment 
and gayer crown. Others find relief in wild 
speculation ; in schemes for forming society in- 
to parallelograms or rhomboids, and in contri- 
ving theories by which men shall get along with- 
out any society or organization whatsoever. Oth- 
ers again, can not trust themselves alone, and are 
scared mightily if they are discovered moving 
in any enterprise without the approval of multi- 
tudes. The restless spirit of the age separates 
men, on the one hand, into units, and makes 
them solitary and discontented ; or gathers them, 
on the other, into noisy and tumultuous masses, 
shouting for change, reform, and progress. The 
world lives abroad, and is not to be found at 
home oftener than once a week, and then only 
if the weather is blusterous and turbulent with- 
out. The domestic feeling — households — are in 
a measure abrogated, and men are to be found 
at clubs, lectures, conventicles, and other pub- 
lic gatherings. The action is all external and 
superficial ; and the heart of society, the pri- 
vate home, has, in a considerable measure lost 
its life, and ceases to supply the vital circula- 
tion which society so much needs. The great 
number of violent deaths proves that the sootl 
ing influences of home and kindred are not felt 
as they should be. 

Men can not keep hands from themselves. 
They wreak upon their own persons th( 
wrongs and restless violence of the age, anc 
take vengeance with the summary knife 01 
cord on the disastrous spirit that rules the 
times. The blood of self-slaughter cries out 01 
every hand ; nothing, it would seem, can arrest 
its flowing. Peace and prosperous fortune can 
not stay the deadly hand ; pleading wives and 
children appeal to it in vain, and religion it- 
self stands dumb and awe-stricken in presence 
of the ghastly demon of suicide. 

Men struggle with it, and wander up and 
down streets, and by the side of calm rivers, 
but the perturbed spirit will not rest. The 
monster can not be foiled, but must have his prey. 



THE UNREST OF THE AGE. 



345 



They fall on their knees, calling great God 
to help them quell the devilish thought; but it 
triumphs like a fate. They stagger before mir- 
rors and glasses, to know if the sight of a hu- 
man countenance — even their own, in this mo- 
ment of terrible delusion — can not shame the 
fiend or scare him back. The next moment 
his unhappy dupe lies weltering in blood, 
with a prayerbook, perchance, grasped in his 
struggling hand, opened at the page which 
pleads that we may be " spared from tempta- 
tion." 

Can an age or a country be right-minded 
and true, where such things happen ? Is life 
so fearful a burden in this land of ours, that 
men should snatch themselves from it with 
insane haste, and post out of it as if it swarmed 
with hydras and chimeras ? Is the sky murk- 
ier or the earth sadder here than elsewhere ? 
Have men weightier cares or sharper crosses 
in this latitude than in Nova Zembla, or in the 
Friendly islands of the Pacific ? Of cares and 
crosses, growing necessarily out of climate or 
condition, there are not ; of hardships self-cre- 
ated, and bad passions, idly fomented and en- 
couraged, a great plenty. We are mad for 
money, mad for office and empty power. 

If we sought money eagerly that we might 
scatter it among the poor and needy, and make 
of its idle glitter a sunshine in dark places, 
the good purpose would sanctify the pursuit, 
and men would not go mad and take their own 
lives, however the enterprise might end. If we 
sought power over the hearts and consciences of 
men, and aimed to glide into their thoughts among 
genial influences, springing from a happy exer- 
cise of genius or virtue, it would be well, and 
the world would have good cause to honor our 
graves. But when wealth, interpreted, means 
bond and mortgage piled on bond and mortgage, 
and an excellent character at the bank ; and 
power desires no nobler position than a high 
stool at a desk, in the department of state, or a 
sounding voice in the halls of political or reli- 
gious strife — all is not well ; but, rather, hol- 
low, tottering, and unsafe, to him that ventures 
abroad. 

The times do not satisfy the desires of the 
mind. The literal hardness, the prosaic aus- 
terity of the habits and pursuits of the age, fur- 
nish but little encouragement to the imagina- 
tive and aspiring part of the soul. Insanity, 
in many cases, suicide, and other terrible acts 
of desperation, seem to us the rebellious out- 
breaks of a nature wronged and tortured by 
the iron condition in which it is placed. Men 
know not what deep, overwhelming injustice 
they do to themselves in neglecting or disdaining 
the imagination. Slighted or kept under, it proves 
the most deadly foe of all the human powers, 
and bodies forth instantly, in vindication of itself, 
a hell gloomier than Dante's, and peopled with 
shapes twenty times more terrible. The hu- 
man mind can not repose on facts; nor find 
permanent ease and security in the unadorned 
incidents of a life of mere business or action. 



These are too definite, too readily summed up 
and concluded. The round is easily run, and 
the limit soon discovered. It needs something 
remote, uncertain, shadowy, and boundless, 
which shall operate as a perpetual stimulant to 
our restless nature, and a perpetual gratifica- 
tion that can not be exhausted. The remedy, 
then — a part of it at least — lies here ; in fur- 
nishing occasions of enjoyment to the imagina- 
tion, and in cultivating the arts and pursuits in 
which it is the chief element. 

Paintings, in which the ideal world is shad- 
owed forth, or in which the actual world is 
raised to the standard of a glowing or cheerful 
ideal, feed this passion with its best sustenance. 
A country blessed with a Raphael and an Ange- 
lo, is of a happier and more equable tempera- 
ment, all other circumstances conforming, than 
one which has not a single great painter, and 
is compelled to point to its signboards for spe- 
cimens of art. Pictures in which character is 
exhibited in grotesque or humorous phases, by 
relieving the mind from the painful pressure of 
rigid and exact life and custom, further this 
grand object. 

On this ground can poetry be safely vindicated 
from all cavil and opprobrium. Poetry sends this 
hard, round, methodical world of ours, through 
the great void in which it moves, trailing be- 
hind it a glory and brightness, full of hope and 
cheerful auguries to men. The emanation in 
this case is mightier and fairer than its source ; 
and we are taught by the sublime influences of 
bards and prophets, speaking and chanting in 
noble pages, that what is not is greater than 
what is or seems to be. A golden light, serene, 
genial, and blessed, is shot down from the 
bright world of romance and rapturous truth, 
in which we walk with a proud consciousness 
of a high, but as yet unseen destiny, and of 
faculties that yearn after something better and 
grander than the planetary crosses of the pres- 
ent life. 

In the creation of character, too, of a purer 
and more chivalrous cast than that of actual 
men, literature is rendering a great service to 
the world, and drawing it away from the mean, 
petty usages, the degrading tricks, and gross 
customs of our everyday life. In the contempla- 
tion of these romantic portraitures, in the works 
of novelists and poets, the age finds relief, and 
forgets, for a time, the hardships of society, and 
the despotism of circumstances. Even where 
the writer adopts a contrary course, it is a sat- 
isfaction to the world to have a Squeers, or in 
Iago gibbeted high before them, in the full 
length of their desperate villany. These are 
their sport and pastime, a sort of lay figure! to 
receive the heaped-up scorn and contumely oC 
all mankind. In either event the object is ac- 
complished, and the qnarrel with bad fortune 
or cursed chance is for the lime silenced, or 
turned into I more melodious and promising 

wrnngle. 

Lei it not be said that the world's horn > 
men like Scott, and Dickens, and Wordsworth, 




346 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



is extravagant or irrational. It is men like 
these, laboring for the purposes we have attempt- 
ed to describe, that preserve the healthful ac- 
tion of the general mind, and furnish to many 
hearts consolations and solaces that could 
scarcely be found elsewhere, this side of scrip- 
ture. The age can not do them too much hon- 
or, for they are the chief friends and benefac- 
tors of the age. 

We do not pretend to say that in the cultiva- 
tion of art and literature lies the sole remedy 
for the heavy evils that oppress the hour; but 
in them we find many of our faculties and pas- 
sions wisely exercised, which employed in the 
common businesses and pursuits of the world, 
are degraded, abused, and misdirected, or im- 
perfectly engaged, so as to create incalculable 
misery and crime. 

The multitude of newspapers and new inven- 
tions, crowded patent-offices, swarming streets, 
and thronged rivers and mountain-sides, bear 
testimony to the restless spirit of the age. The 
world is at the top of its speed, and yet it in- 
dustriously plies whip and spur, as if it thought 
itself moving at a snail's pace. The demands 
of trade and commerce will scarcely account 
for this. There is an unquiet devil at the heart 
of the times, which pricks them perpetually on, 
and makes of the whole race a sort of wander- 
ing Jewry, doomed to have no rest nor pause, 
until the hearse and the undertaker are at the 
door. 

Of alarmists and preachers of agitation, we 
have sufficient ; we need apostles of peace and 
tranquillity. It is necessary that the heart of 
the age should be soothed and calmed, and its 
vast activity turned to some better account than 
place-hunting and money-piling, the uproar of 
battle and the mad cries of trade. 

The serene spirit that lives in good books, 
the music of good men's voices, the quiet shades 
of the sanctuary, and the sabbath stillness of 
thoughts above the age, should be sometimes 
sought, and would not be sought in vain. The 
consolations of literature and truth, imbodied in 
paintings and many-colored pages by the master- 
hands of our generation, would not come to us 
without warning and encouragement, and we 
would not then dare to curse God and die, be- 
cause life seemed to us without hope, and void. 



OUR ILLUSTRIOUS PREDECESSORS. 

American antiquities have of late become 
quite popular. Relics and memorials found on 
our own soil are beginning to be talked of with 
the same degree of interest as if they had been 
dug up among the Picts, Pelasgians, or ancient 
Druids. Native pottery, of a thousand years 
old, has risen in the market, and while new 
temples of Christian worship are going up on 
every side of us, people begin to throng, in 
imagination at least, about the doors of those 



sacred old edifices that stand on our southern 
and western border. The time may come when 
the Mound-builders shall be used to point a 
moral or adorn a tale, as well as Greek or Ro- 
man ; and if a railroad should be struck through 
the heart of the Alleganies to the Atlantic, 
would it be wonderful if some tumulus of half 
an acre, superficial measure, should be trans- 
ported bodily to the centre of Chatham-square, 
and employed as a pulpit for chaste political 
harangues, for denunciation or exaltation of 
sub-treasury, and the general discussion of 
finance and default. Mr. Delafield has done 
something, by publishing a gilt-edged quarto, 
toward bringing about so happy a consumma- 
tion. If a book like his, or Mr. Caleb Atwater's, 
could have been placed in the hands of the first 
pilgrim that lauded on Plymouth-rock, we think 
he would have stared a little. " A pretty new 
world !" he would have said, " where the whole 
back part of it is crumbling and falling in 
pieces, after this fashion !" Such is, in fact, 
the precise truth of the matter; and bus}', ac- 
tive-minded men are now engaged in snatching 
such morsels from decay and utter extirpation 
as lie in their power. We trust that they will 
be cheerful and zealous in their labors, and not 
allow themselves to be discomposed or put out 
of countenance by an occasional draught of dry 
dust or sepulchral ashes. The work must go 
on, must be prosecuted, until we are assured 
how those martial old fellows, those antedilu- 
vian buck-eyes and hoosiers, the Mound-build- 
ers, carried it in their day against wind, tem- 
pest, heart-ache, and the " thousand pains that 
flesh is heir to." Let us know how they loved 
and made love, what grain they planted, how 
light was furnished, and how pew-rents stood, 
so far toward sunset, a thousand years ago. 
How they fought we know, for stout spears, 
sharp arrows, and helms of proof tell the story, 
though the head that wore, the arm that wield- 
ed, and the eye that aimed, are long ago mould- 
ered in the dust. Who was their great man in 
their palmiest day ? Was he, Webster-like, of 
huge thews and sinews ; or did he steal upon 
the nation in the dwarfish shape and guise of a 
Van Buren ? Or were their politics, their par- 
ties and political divisions, based on some tomb- 
building question ? whether man's last lodging 
should be round or square at top? with two 
openings or twelve ? 

Another question of vast importance, in 
which all Pearl street and half Greenwich has 
an interest, what ware did they use ? what 
particular importation of crockery ? Or were 
they in total darkness, entire ignorance of din- 
ner dishes and tea-sets ? No point has been 
more thoroughly vexed among the antiquaries 
than this ; and we would respectfully suggest 
that a scholarship be founded by our merchants 
in that branch of business, to be entitled the 
delf or red-pottery scholarship, for the specific 
investigation of this subject. New patterns 
might be discovered, and trade receive a fresh 
impulse from the other side of the Alleganies 



OUR ILLUSTRIOUS PREDECESSORS. 



347 



and the borders of the Oregon. How was busi- 
ness conducted among these old heathen ? How 
was society held together ? Were there such 
things as clubs, sects, friendships, among that 
bookless and unchronicled generation of men ? 
Not an author among them, we are sure ; not 
an editor or sonneteer, who has left a " file" or 
a stanza to enlighten us. Were bonds and 
mortgages and brokers known among them ? 
or have these inventions come in since the 
flood ? We do trust in heaven that further re- 
searches will not disclose to us (at that early 
day at least), the existence of a stock-market 
west of the Ohio ; although we have a shrewd 
suspicion that some such startling truth will 
come to light, from the position in which many 
bodies are found on the banks of Marietta and 
the upper Wabash — namely, stretched at length 
under aged trees, with mouldered ends of rope 
or flax, or some material bearing a striking re- 
semblance thereto, in close neighborhood with 
their necks. Fatal evidences, we fear, of fancy 
gambling and its logical consequences ! Tread- 
ing-wheels and stock-dealers we had hoped 
were contemporary. 

Would the endorsement of one's name on the 
back of an oblong scrap of foolscap, subject 
one with that primitive people to the nuisance 
of a notary's clerk, subsequently of a notary 
himself, and finally to that prime pest and orna- 
ment of modern communities, a practising at- 
torney ? This instrument of torture, the pro- 
missory note, is perhaps to be referred to the 
same epoch as brokers and treading-mills. 

Another point — where did their ancient legis- 
latures convene ? In the mammoth cave, or 
in some of the larger mounds ? We think the 
latter might be recommended as an august and 
impressive place of assembling, to any legisla- 
tive or other corporate body. Bones, death's- 
heads, grinning skulls, would preach nobly 
against rascality, bargaining, and corruption. 
No jobs could be managed in such a vicinity. 
Dead neighbors would lift up their bare arms 
and withered palms, to strike or deprecate bold 
or timid violaters of right and justice. As to 
the dress of these dumb and mummy mound- 
builders, can there be doubt ? Wc may rest 
established in the faith that they did not wear 
swallow-tail coats, peaked boots, and stiff neck- 
stocks — did not thrust their shrewd sconces into 
that utter abomination, a black beaver noggin. 
They the rather flaunted it in loose, flowing 
robes, sandals, and majestic pagan turbans ! 

Furthermore, did they enjoy that noble an- 
nual festival, a charter election ? When mound- 
builder rushed against mound-builder, and mum- 
my was scurrilous to mummy, that some little 
denizen of a pothouse might be alderman over 
a circuit of a dozen tumuli (in one of which 
he should be smiled to-morrow), and conserve 
the peace against river-rats and ground-moles? 
Perhaps they had other and more stirring 
amusement, as their walls and covered ways 
would seem to indicate a pretty vigilant foe to 
be taken care of on the outside ! 



Can we think of this ancient, solemn, and 
buried race as enjoying parties of pleasure, tea- 
gardens, boating, rockets, and other frivolous 
divertisements ? Is the conjecture plausible 
enough to impose on our understanding, that 
juvenile mound-builders were in the habit of 
crowning the day with a " dash" out of town 
in a box, or pillory rather, suspended between 
two enormous fly-wheels, and careering it along 
the bank of the Mississippi, or under some jut- 
ting cliff of Allegany, at the rate of seventeen 
miles an hour, with a tandem of bison ? 

How does the notion strike us of one of these 
silent and reserved skeletons strutting a paved 
street, perfumed, gloved, and corseted ? Will 
the imagination endure to think of a tomb-full 
of these interred and stately people, starting 
up into a popular assembly, and shouting their 
lungs in pieces to have a farthing taken off of 
beer, or a smirched bank-bill cashed in copper ? 
Can we conceive of them rushing about in 
fragmentary hats and dilapidated waistcoats, 
spouting patriotism at taverns, and asking to be 
paid for it afterward ? 

To leave their sports and come to matters of 
a graver nature — much discussion has occurred 
as to the purpose or purposes to which certain 
round and square buildings of stone within 
their borders were applied. Some assert that 
they were employed as watch-towers to keep a 
look-out for an approaching enemy from the 
north or west ; others will have it that they 
were light-houses to guide navigators over the 
prairies ; and a third party (of a more serious 
turn of conjecture) assures us that they were 
built for no less purpose than the use of the 
reverend clergy, and occupied by them as read- 
ing-desks. Their supposed system of sun-wor- 
ship, and out-of-door religion, lends some plausi- 
bility to this guess. We believe that these 
towns were built by the auctioneers, and were 
put in daily requisition by them in their ordinary 
course of business. 

They had auctioneers ; of that we are well- 
assured. No man with a genius for the busi- 
ness could have gone long without catching at 
the facilities for its prosecution afforded by tu- 
muli, barrows, and stone-towers. Standing on 
one of these at noonday, he would as naturally 
lift his voice in the line of trade as an adult 
rooster from a wall. 

" How much, how much ! a prime yoke of 
bison! Two years old this season. Going — 
going. Now a dozen helmets ; Sledgekopp's 
make; with bucklers and breastplate^ to match 
— Cheap — going cheap, to close the affairs of a 
retired warrior!" This was on the day of sale ; 
but how he managed to announce his auction, 
is not so readily imagined j whether by a hoy 
hurried through the country OB the back of a 
hackney bulfalo, I punchy and full-winded old- 
er mouml-builder, With a hell (as in oiu modern 
Boston, the creature of yesterday), or h\ \hc 

cheaper derio of ■ Has thrust out al the top 
of one of the towers of stone. 

The glorious wilderness ol' the mound-build- 



348 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



ers appeals to us by considerations deeper and 
tenderer than these. In this fertile and flow- 
ing region, it is said, that first and happiest 
garden, the garden of Eden, once stood. Here 
Adam (if this pleasing conjecture be true) re- 
ceived the title-deed, the great fee of the earth, 
from his sovereign and paramount Lord ; and 
in this selectest spot — one that should be con- 
secrated in the hearts and memories of all the 
long generations of mankind — he first took by 
the hand the blessed creature, who made a para- 
dise of all the earth when they were driven 
forth beyond their garden-wall. Cunning and 
excellent child of nature ! who could not bear 
the circumscription of rampart and river, and 
who would rather sin and be free, than a bliss- 
ful prisoner, tethered to happiness and spotless 
joys ! Tread lightly, therefore, on the fair 
fields of the west ; for you know not what 
ancient and cherished echoes may be slumber- 
ing in its cliffs and river-sides, nor how gently 
the fore-parents of us all are sleeping there ! 



THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEATH.* 

Death has spoken to the American people 
in a voice of consequence and power he can 
not hereafter surpass. He has spoken from the 
Capitol, and standing amidst the highest mem- 
orials of authority this nation can know. 
There may not be in the voice an unrivalled 
depth of passion, nor a heart-piercing sharp- 
ness of agony, but all of force and solemnity to 
be acquired from high station, newness and 
splendor of office, and the sustained gaze of 
many millions of free people, sounds in the ac- 
cents he has recently uttered. Poets and men of 
genius, in God's good time, will arise, and labor, 
and die a death that comes much nearer to 
the heart than this ; philanthropists and pris- 
on-searchers, like Howard, and emancipators 
of men, will enter the tomb with a more tear- 
ful train ; patriots, falling on the plain amid 
foes to civil liberty, and martyrs dying for con- 
science' sake, must shake the bosom with a pro- 
founder grief. 

Nor was this death altogether wanting in in- 
cidents of an heroic description ; up to the Cap- 
itol the good president marched, amid throngs 
of earnest friends, all eager to grasp his hand 
and cry out " God bless him !" as he passed ; the 
benisons of thousands hung upon his steps, and 
he planted himself in the chief chair of state 
under many cheerful auspices and promises of 
good at hand ; in three-and-thirty days he was 
laid out in the presidential mansion to receive 
callers ; but no more to stretch to them the 
welcome hand, or cheer them with the joyous 
eye. A month's president — he came into pow- 
er in a whirlwind, which subsided shortly into 
the low- whispering dirge of death. 

+ William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, was inaugurated 
President of the Unitod States March 4, 1841, and 
died the 4th of April following. 



When we call back to our imagination the 
banners, the loud, free shouts, the boastful 
drums, and the choral songs of November, and 
see how they have died away into an April 
mildness of tears, and shrouded emblems, and 
slow mournful marches and processions, we 
learn that we live in two worlds that glide into 
and interchange with each other. Light and 
shadow never lay closer side by side. Assum- 
ing power in the midst of triumph and accla- 
mation, our late chief magistrate laid it down 
in quietude and a solemn stillness never to 
be broken. The great robe of office changed, 
as of itself and with miraculous swiftness, into 
the silent shroud and plain bands of utter peace. 
We rejoice that the good old man is gone. The 
future time grows dark upon the view. What of 
discord, and war, and civil confusion, labors in 
the gathering cloud, God only knows. It was 
eminent good fortune, that he whose life had 
been happy and triumphant, should pass out of 
it ere its peace was broken by the sounds of 
alien hostility; or, to a true spirit, the more 
fearful murmurs of disaffection or distrust, from 
his own countrymen and people. 

We rejoice that he is dead, inasmuch as this 
one death, high and lamented as it is, has con- 
summated a great truth, and confirmed our faith 
in free institutions and free men. A change 
which elsewhere often wrenches thrones from 
their foundations, has here been wrought with 
the silence and dignity of a funeral pageant. 
The supreme power of the land has descended 
into the second constitutional hands — by no ar^- 
rogant transmission of blood, nor insolent inter- 
ference of armed men — without a pause or a 
murmur. Our faith in men, our reverence for 
the constitutional charter, have moulted what- 
ever spot or soil they may have acquired in any 
recent mischances, and, new-fledged, ascend 
again, and with an undoubting eye dare con- 
template the future in its most boding and dis- 
astrous shapes. 

. Never, we will venture to say, never was 
the attachment of a people to its institutions 
exhibited with more sense, decorum, and con- 
stancy, than in the present trial ; never were 
the better elements of the American character 
evoked with greater success, although the lap- 
idary hand that called to the surface the bright, 
new aspects and colors, was cold and deadly. 

In a former article, illustrative of the inci- 
dents of the recent presidential canvass,* we 
had occasion to speak of the employment ot 
emblems and devices in furtherance of political 
or party objects. The same subject now arises 
with a less cheerful complexion ; and the ques- 
tion at present is, how far the use of shrouded 
standards, badges, crapes, and printers' rules, 
as denotements of grief, is wise and necessary. 

There is, unquestionably, a class of minds- 
men of refined or imaginative temperament — 
with whom they are not needed, whose delicate 
sense of sorrow is, perhaps, offended by the 

* page 330. 



THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEATH. 



display of any symbol or evidence of feeling 
whatever. They would enjoy their grief in si- 
lence, and cherish the dart that has pierced 
their breast, in secrecy and repose. They ask 
for no gloomy weeds, no sable hearse, no long 
train of mourners, no pomp of obsequies, or fu- 
- neral observance. These, influenced by a true 
delicacy of feeling, perhaps, would not have 
the metropolis defile through its own streets in 
divisions of clergy, laity, magistracy, and sol- 
diery ; with sections and sub-sections, composed 
of ex-aldermen and ex-presidents, the horse of 
the deceased, led by his aged servant, an urn 
shrouded in black, -and twenty-six pall-bearers, 
representing the twenty-six states of the Union. 
But it should be borne in mind that the class of 
meditative and thoughtful sorrowers for a pub- 
lic man is extremely limited ; and that it is for 
the general mind, and for the purpose of stamp- 
ing upon it a deep and salutary conviction of 
the bereavement, that these devices are in- 
tended. 

The shrouded eagle brings home the pointed 
dart with double force to their bosoms ; and the 
golden-lettered,banner, blotted from the sun by 
dreary crape, makes thick and palpable the 
sense of their grief. The artisan, who would 
scarcely trouble himself with profound reflec- 
tions that would justify lamentation, and whose 
heart is, perhaps, scarcely alive to the nice 
sensibilities that constantly vibrate and keep 
grief true to its object, as he strikes a blow up- 
on the bench or the anvil casts his eye upon 
the dark band that encircles his arm, and feels, 
of a truth, that a great and good man has fallen. 
Keeping, therefore, this side of quaint and fop- 
pish distinctions, such as the wearing of the 
badge above the elbow for the military token of 
grief, and below it as the citizen's, we hold the 
influence of public ceremonials and appropri- 
ate emblems, justifiable and useful; the eye is 
fixed, the heart improved, and the memory kept 
fresh. 

Depressed and humiliated by an occasion 
that towered too high for it to strike at, we re- 
joiced to see with what efficacy the evil spirit 
of party was laid and made to hold its peace for 
a season. Despotic, slanderous, Ishmael-like, 
and brazen, as it is, it could not keep its front 
amid the solemn scene, but slunk away from 
the fraternal obsequies, and crouching in the 
distance, sits at gaze, ready, we doubt not, to 
re-enter his realm at the earliest chance. Would 
that he might be made there to inure, a miser- 
able exile, an outcast, marplot, and peace- 
breaker — for ever and ever. He has been no 
friend of ours ; has done us no good service, 
that we know of, for sixty years ; on the con- 
trary, has not spared pains or toil to make us 
restless, embittered, and belligerent toward one 
another. Why, therefore, he should be permit- 
ted to put men together by the ears, to harass 
and excite them, from year's-end to year's-end, 
and from Maine to Florida, is beyond the power 
of plain sense to comprehend. Is this spirit so 
fierce and barbarian in his nature, that nothing 



I but skeleton hands can smite him dumb, and 
dead men's voices quell the devil that rages 
I within him ? Is no appeal sufficient which em- 
anates from quiet firesides, the calm privacy of 
domestic life, past goodness, present worth, or 
future usefulness, that candidates for office 
must be assailed with demoniac energy and bit- 
terness, and be made to repent the day they 
were rash enough to lend themselves to the 
public service ? Does any one believe that our 
politicians and statesmen, our chief counsellors 
and advisers in critical affairs, are the gross, 
sinister, and corrupt men, they are painted in 
the harangues of partisan declaimers and the 
paragraphs of party prints ? Does any one 
hold either party to be the Jacobinical club, the 
mercenary junto, the base, false foe of our in- 
stitutions, which its opposite charges it to be ? 

No, no. The silence and grateful reciproci- 
ty of an occasion like the late presidential buri- 
al, disclaims and repudiates any such belief as 
harsh and unjust ; proves that the violence and 
fierceness of party are an unnatural and fever- 
ish condition of the body politic, and calls upon 
us from the very bosom of its repose and seren- 
ity, to make our political differences henceforth 
differences of judgment and opinion, and not of 
idle passion and insane perversion of character 
and truth. 

Another kindred lesson we have been taught 
by this great event ; that the American press 
possesses, under all its abuses, a profound sense 
of justice and right ; that it is willing to be a 
co-worker with the public mind in the expres- 
sion of humane and charitable sentiments, and 
liberal opinions. 

Everywhere has it written of the recent 
death with forbearance, good feeling, and a 
proper regard for the charities of life. Back 
and forth through every part of the land have 
the mournful tidings been tolled and echoed; 
and the whole press has been but one continuous 
chime of melancholy bells, responding, itera- 
ting, and harmonizing with each other. What- 
ever errors of taste, or defects of mere critical 
judgment may be charged upon our journals, 
we have uniformly found them, apart from 
partisan bias, sound and clear on questions of 
morals, and just, so far as they were informed, 
in advocating the risjht and rebuking the wrong- 
doer. Certain ingrained abuses we fear there 
are, dark flaws of passion, and stains of preju- 
dice and error, which we devoutly wish might 
be purged away ; but for the good which it has 
done, we thank it, and trust it will date from 
the present hour its new calendar of kind offi- 
ces, enlightened humanity, and temperate ad- 
vocacy of truth. 

The respect of republics for magistracy and 
constituted authorities can not be heieallcr 
called in question. This, the first occasion 
on which the whole nation could unite to ex- 
hibit, by undoubted testimonials, their respeet 
for the common head of all, has irivtn birth to 

expression! of regard unprompted by precedent 

or prescription — for there were no such guides 



350 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



in the present case — but flowing spontaneously 
from the popular heart. Nature spoke out 
from its own primitive shrine, suggesting, di- 
recting, and inspiring what was to be done, and 
the result was a simple and genuine homage 
worthy of a free nation. For the man, deep, 
earnest sorrow, we doubt not, was felt ; but 
for the president, a sterner and more compre- 
hensive regret. It was the great office disten- 
anted that caused dismay, the sense of an aw- 
ful bereavement, and general gloom. When 
the nation looked up and discerned a great 
blank in! the firmament of its powers and prin- 
cipalities, whence its chief planet had de- 
parted, what wonder that it started back and 
stretched its hands to the heavens, in depreca- 
tion of the mighty Providence that had wheeled 
it from its sphere. 

Standing at the portal of the tomb, and rever- 
ently regarding the illustrious dead, it seems to 
us as if a solemn voice issued forth counselling 
peace, fraternal love, amity with nations, and 
trust in God. Death has drawn nigh to us, and 
seems as if he stalked with majestic port across 
the threshold of our homes, and had seated 
himself by our firesides to read us a lesson 
from the great text-book of Providence which 
he ever bears in his hand. Oh, wiser far than 
all human scripture and black-letter teaching 
is the practical homily by which he informs us 
of the solemn requirements of duty, household 
justice, national purity, and, chiefest of all, of 
the eternal crisis toward which every man is 
hastening with that gloomy guide as his usher 
and chamberlain ! 



A MOVEMENT IN CLERKDOM. 

There is no example on record of a more 
successful rising than the recent one of the 
clerks of New York, to relieve themselves of 
the thraldom of overwork. From the begin- 
ning, it furnished evidences of a sure and ulti- 
mate triumph ; first a speck no larger than a 
man's — no, not so large — no larger than a 
clerk's hand, appeared in one of the public 
prints, a mere paragraph ; then the anonymous 
call of a public meeting ; then the proceedings 
thereat, with a brief reference to several elo- 
quent and masterly speeches delivered ; a chair- 
man's name appended at full length, in large, 
and two secretaries, in small type ; then a pe- 
tition drawn up, a delegation of clerks appoint- 
ed to bear it before the masters — the mighty re- 
tailers themselves ; and then, it sounded like 
a report of cannon throughout all clerkdom, 
four thousand strong, — victory ! freedom ! the 
clerks are emancipated, have accomplished 
their own deliverance, and shall measure tape 
and falsify colors no more, henceforth and for- 
ever, after eight o'clock, evening. 

Now, as the stroke of the hall clock was on 
the VIII., there was a low murmuring sound 
heard all through the city, of keys turning in 



great rusted locks ; parties were seen strolling 
along — groups of two, or three, or more — look- 
ing back upon the barred door and closed bow- 
windows with an air of triumph, mixed with a 
doubt whether it could be so; whether that 
cursed old shop, that had eaten the heart of so 
many delicious evenings, was at length gorged 
and satisfied with twelve hours' work. Some 
of them, too, would stroll about the town for 
hours, in this same state of mixed wonder and 
pleasure, looking at all the long line of darken- 
ed shop windows ; and when this sport was at 
an end, fairly exhausted, some would betake 
themselves to this resort, some to that ; part to 
oyster-houses, to eat shell-fish against each 
other, for the charges ; some to lectures, some 
to concerts, and not a few to bed, to dream 
about a clerk's paradise, where all the employ- 
ers — it may be supposed — are turned into shop- 
boys, and made to serve the clerks with in- 
numerable spotted neckcloths and endless yards 
of light drab, for pantaloons, day and night. 

The tumult could scarcely be expected to end 
with the dry goods clerks. The fire spread. 
The hardware clerks, notwithstanding the se- 
verity of their vocation, were the next to catch 
the contagion ; summoned their general meet- 
ing ; had their masterly speakers, and resolu- 
tions of pith and supplication ; their committee, 
their petition, and Io Psean ! they, too, are en- 
franchised. 

The next thing, news came in that Newark 
had risen — the respectable and potent burgh of 
Newark, New Jersey — that she had burst the 
shell, and struggled to be free. 

This spirit of emulation and public commo- 
tion so operated, at length, upon the boot and 
shoe clerks — a class slow of thought, and 
heavy-heeled in the march of reform — that 
they, too, raised the banner — supposed, at the 
distance from which we watch the fray, to be 
a cordwainer's apron — rushed into the melee, 
and bore off, with surprising resolution and 
good fortune, a counterpart of the clerks' free 
charter — Magna Charta Clericorum. 

Then followed the hatters' clerks ; then the 
jewellers'; and then came limping along, last 
of all, the maligned, abused, and miss-called 
fry of cutters' and clothiers' servitors. From 
quarter to quarter, the excitement spread, the 
spirit of resistance was aroused, until at length 
the whole realm of clerkly life was in motion. 

Petitions flowed in apace ; masters yielded ; 
shop after shop was carried, as if by storm ; 
and darkness, as of an eclipse — a great gloom 
preceding the dawn of all clerkly joy and hap- 
piness — came over the city as the fatal hour of 
eight was struck. 

Notwithstanding the formidable array thus 
presented to the masters, and the fulminations 
and threatenings of the aroused populace of 
clerks, a few were fool-hardy enough to resist 
their demands. Here and there, through the 
chief streets, a stray light was seen twinkling, 
and forms gliding back and forth behind coun- 
ters — the ramparts of the tyrannical masters 



A MOVEMENT IN CLERKDOM. 



351 



— busily engaged in discharging yarn-balls 
from boxes ; accumulating on the counter- 
scarp, as it might be, material for demi-cannon 
sleeves, and other hostile offices. This was, 
of course, not to be tolerated for any great 
length of time. At first peaceable measures 
were adopted, to drive them from their position ; 
they were only called vampyres and monsters, 
by anonymous writers in the newspapers. 
Then a significant hint was given out, to the 
effect, that if they, the retailers, set any value 
whatever on their show-windows and specimen- 
patterns, they would look out for themselves. 
One correspondent — the most vigorous and 
Saxon of the clerkly penmen — in a private 
communication to a merchant in Chatham 
street, wrote, " I would merely say to you to 
begin with, that you had better look out for 
your glass, if you want to save them from being 
smashed ; moreover, you had better look out 
for your head, if you want to save that, as this 
course of yours will not be allowed." And, 
true enough, a night or two after, a small 
body of resolute clerks was seen marching up 
Chatham street — staggering to and fro, as if 
laboring up against a terrible burden of oppres- 
sed feelings — along Chatham Row, and get- 
ting abreast — as nearly so as their feelings 
would allow them — of the fork of Centre 
street, moved down, with terrible directness, 
upon a shoe-shop that was burning away mer- 
rily, without a thought of what was approach- 
ing, two revolving lights, and three stationary, 
at the rate of more than half a foot of gas an 
hour. In a trice there was a crack, as of glass 
shivering ; then another ; then crack again ; a 
missile glanced past the head of the shop-keep- 
er's daughter ; the shop-keeper himself is 
struck, and has fallen ; his head-clerk, a chick- 
en-hearted youth, who, from very fear and 
povery of spirit, had refused to join in the 
movement, has crept into the bowels of the bis? 
boot for a shelter ; a dead silence ensues, and 
with one good, round shout, the assailants 
swept out of sight. 

These outbreaks were, however, only few in 
number, and of temporary duration. In a short 
time, so successful, as we stated, at the outset, 
was the rising, that not an obnoxious light was 
seen burning ; not a shop-window was left to 
assail ; and with a complimentary announce- 
ment of the names of all who had come into 
the new sumptuary regulation, the conflict was, 
in a great measure, at an end. In the mind 
of the observer and the philanthropist, a start- 
line: question now be^an to put itself. 

How is this mighty mass of disbanded ac- 
tivity to be employed ? What shall be done 
with it ? Flushed with a victory, so recently 
achieved, it is not likely they would subside at 
once into the habits and usages of ordinary 
life. It was suggested, that there were U,,. 
military companies, not under the best discipline 
in the world, to be re-organized ; that the ardor, 
so triumphant in the late rising against the 
masters, might be turned to account in drills, 



target-shootings, fence-exercise — that is, form- 
ing a mathematical straight line against a wall 
— and other martial divertisements. A taste 
for colors, derived from their day-light pursuits, 
and the habit of marching up to a counter, and 
keeping in a line with it all day long, it was 
supposed, would give them peculiar advantages 
in this new enterprise. A battalion of four 
thousand spruce clerks, marching, by night, to 
the sound of flutes and soft recorders — with 
both of which, habits of nightly serenading 
make them familiar — was a spectacle that 
many hoped to see. This would not do. There 
was another occupation, in which they might 
embark which would afford a vent for the 
roused spirit of the reformers. There is a 
grand modern specific for all possible ills ; a 
creature of all-work, equal to any task that 
may be laid on it. It builds ships and steam- 
boats ; can put a custard on one's plate, and a 
patch on one's trowsers, free of charge ; opens 
and closes theatres ; buries one man in Potter's 
field, at will, and builds a monument half way 
to the stars over another; is regaled on straw- 
berries and melons, the first of the season; 
has a voice in every company — heard above all 
others ; hangs this man ; is at the heels of that, 
all through the Union, turn wherever he may ; 
makes zanies and idiots, by its " so potent arts," 
of wisest men; and elevates to the chair of 
Plato and Socrates the merest dolts and mad- 
men. The combined wisdom and resolution of 
the metropolitan clerks, therefore, fixed on a 
newspaper, as the representative of their en- 
franchised activity ; and before us now lies, 
wide-awake, and coiled for a spring, the latest 
offspring of the hundred-headed press — The 
Clerk's Gazette. The two numbers under our 
eye give evidence of what is called a healthy, 
moral tone, and exhibit qualities which must 
be a source of infinite satisfaction to their 
friends and patrons. " We have," says the 
Clerk's Gazette, No. 2, "youth and enthusaism, 
hand in hand with talent, energy, and expe- 
rience !" 

Now if there be any one thing that pleases 
us more than another, or all others, it is to see 
a public journal conducted with this species of 
modest assurance. Nothing can be, certainly, 
more satisfactory to a subscriber, than to know 
that he has the honor of perusing the lucubra- 
tions of a Solomon every morn inn : and noth- 
ing can be more charming as establishing a 
frank and candid communication between writer 
and reader, than to have the editor furnishing, 
six times a week, or oftener, a regular and ex- 
act inventory of all the traits of his character, 

the little personal peculiarities so fascinating 

among friends, so agreeable in s. select domestic 

eii ele ; how much more entertaining and piquant 
when blazoned in print ! 

"The next number o\' this journal," quoth 

the Clerk's Gazette, " will be the best thai has 
appeared. We have said it." 

That we like. It is short ami terse ; . 
to the point at once, and promises, without 



352 



SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS. 



halting, that the Solomon of Wednesday last 
shall be, by Wednesday next, thrown complete- 
ly into the shade, made quite an idiot of, by the 
revised, improved, and regenerated Solomon, 
now on his way, with a new number of his 
journal under his arm. Made virtute ! 

The war waged with the masters is at an 
end, and this — the Gazette of the conflict — 
seems destined to acquire for the combatants, 
laurels grown in a more peaceful soil — a gar- 
den-plant, whose root is refreshed and enlivened 
with ink, instead of blood. 

It is scarcely necessary to add, that the revo- 
lution, so imperfectly narrated, has our best 
wishes, that it may be as permanent and endur- 
ing, as it has been sudden and decisive ; that the 
hours rescued from the gymnastic and toilsome 



exercise of counter-crossing, may be devoted to 
pursuits, at least as graceful, if not quite so 
profitable and remunerating. The clerks of 
the great metropolis of New York, are a for- 
midable body; they have shown, by a single 
shaking of the mane, in the recent struggle for 
liberation, of what effects they are capable; 
and it only remains for them to carry into other 
employments, the same sagacity in undertaking, 
the same energy, force of combination, and 
public spirit in prosecuting, and the same firm- 
ness and wisdom in securing a good result — as in 
the recent movement — to acquire for themselves 
the character of setting their hand to no plough 
that does not go through the furrow triumphant- 
ly to an end ; of raising no shout or battle-call, 
that is not musical with the very notes of victory. 



END OF SELECTIONS FROM ARCTURUS 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT, 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



A SPEECH 

ON 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT, 

DELIVERED AT THE 

DINNER TO CHARLES DICKENS, 

AT THE CITY HOTEL, NEW YORK, 

February 19, 1842. 

The president (Washington Irving, Esq.), 
having proposed the sentiment, " International 
. Coypright — It is but fair that those who have 
laurels for their brows should be permitted to 
browse on their laurels," Mr. Cornelius Math- 
ews responded : — 

I answer your summons, Mr. President, un- 
der some restraint. I am not quite sure that it 
becomes me, an humble lay-brother of the order 
of authors, to trouble a diplomatist and Spanish 
minister, in any way, with the insignificant af- 
fairs of the fraternity. But when I recollect 
how the distinguished gentleman on your right, 
a monk, at least, if not a bishop, has been late- 
ly received in this great city of ours, I am re- 
assured. Knowing how you, once an honored 
member of the craft, are going forth from the 
country, its ambassador and representative, 
and how he, a man of letters, in full communion 
with the brethren, has just entered it — I think 
I may venture to say a word or two of rights 
which you hold in common. In speaking on 
the subject of an International copyright, at this 
time, I would not be understood as being moved 
by any new impulse or sudden enthusiasm ; but 
as uttering convictions carefully considered and 
Ion? entertained. 

That I am speaking in the presence of an 
eminent foreign writer — the universality of 
whose genius, appealing by its delineations to 
all classes and conditions of men, would seem 
to entitle him to a universal recognition of his 
rights — will, I believe, by no means diminish 
the force of what I may say. 

It is argued sometimes, I know, that authors 
have no rights ; and a paper-dealing tradesman 



of this city, greedy of some sort of renown, has 
lately contended if we could but get English 
books at the cost of type and paper (the author 
being considered an impertinent third party), 
all the ends of good literature would be an- 
swered. I might ask this artful casuist, how it 
would suit his convenience — he being a man of 
some stamp and character among his neighbors 
—to come abroad in the open light of day — in 
a coat yet odorous of the fingers of the petit- 
larceny thief; a hat savoring of the burglar's 
fist ; his pockets jingling with the transferred 
coin of a bank robber. But I look beyond this 
miserable economical subterfuge, and seek, 
somewhat farther down, the actual operation 
of an uncopyrighted foreign literature, reprint- 
ed without restraint. [^There is at this moment, 
waging in our midst, a great war between a 
foreign and a native literature. The one claims 
pay, food, lodging, and raiment : the other bat- 
tles free of all charges, takes the field prepared 
for all weathers and all emergencies ; has nei- 
ther a mouth to cry for sustenance, a back to 
be clothed, nor a head to be sheltered. 

The conflict between a paid literature and 
an unpaid, is a fierce one while it lasts ; it can 
not last long. The one relies on the feeble 
and uncertain impulses of authorship ; the other 
is driven on by all the restless interests of trade. 
What, sir, is the present condition of the field 
of letters in America '/ It is in a state of des- 
perate anarchy — without order, without system, 
without certainty. For several years past, it 
has been sown broad-cast with foreign publi- 
cations of every name and nature. What 
growth has ensued ? No single work, so far 
as I can see, has sprung up as its legitimate 
result ; no addition to the stock of native poetry 
or fiction ; no tree has blossomed ; no solitary 
blade struck through the hard and ungrateful 
turf. Whatever has been produced has been in 
spite of opposition from within and without ; has 
been the bright exception, not the rale. It 
of being fostered and promoted, as it should be, 
our domestic literature is borne down by nn 
unmethodical and unrestrained republication of 
every foreign work that will bear the eh I 
of the compositor and paper-maker. 

Under the regulations of an International 



356 



SPEECH ON 



copyright, the work of a British author would 
be published here in its order ; would take its 
chance with other works, native and foreign ; 
would he valued and circulated according to its 
worth; and would hold its rank in due subor- 
dination to the judgment passed upon it by the 
side of other compositions. What is the case 
now ? A new work by the author of " Charles 
O'Malley" reaches this country — a pleasant, 
lively, vivacious picture of Irish life and dra- 
goon service, well worthy of being printed by 
some prominent house, furnished to the libra- 
ries, and put into the hands of a liberal circle 
of readers, in due course of trade. This would 
be proper and natural. On the contrary, twen- 
ty, yea, fifty or a hundred hands — for the giant 
of republication is single-eyed and many -hand- 
ed — are thrust forth, spasmodically to clutch 
the first landed copy ; it is followed, watched 
to its destination; violent hands are perhaps 
laid on it, to snatch it from its first possessor ; 
it is reprinted; early copies are despatched in- 
to the country; new editions follow, in pamph- 
let, in book, by chapters in a thousand news- 
papers ; the land is vocal with the unrestrained 
chuckle of the daily and weekly press over this 
new acquisition ; while no other writer, what- 
ever his merit, if his popularity be but a degree 
less, is listened to. What hope is there here 
for the native author ? 

The odds are tremendous ; and I do not hesi- 
tate to say, sir, that if he had thousands to lav- 
ish on the printing of a single work, a press in 
every village, a publisher of enterprise and 
spirit in every city, the purchased control of 
fifty newspapers, he would be only beginning 
to enter the field on anything like fair terms 
with Dr. Lever. The one literature, the for- 
eign, is propelled through the country by steam, 
the other, the native, halts after on foot or 
in such conveyances as a very narrow purse 
may bargain for. Principles, it may be, alien 
to our own, travel with the speed of lightning, 
while national truths, in which we have the 
profoundest interest, follow at a lacquey's pace 
behind. As an American I feel this and I avow 
it. From the contemplation of that distin- 
guished author, glorying in the zenith of a 
reputation universal as the light of day, my 
eyes turn away, and in the sequestered retreat, 
in the cramped and narrow room, seek that 
other brother of his, poor, neglected, borne 
down by the heavy hand of his country, laid 
like an oppressor's upon him ; and I feel that 
the conditions of human life are hard indeed. 
Far be it from me, sir, to indulge in idle repi- 
nings over any of the inevitable sufferings 
of authors or of men ; farther be it from me 
to cast any shadow upon the general joy of 
this occasion ; but I feel it my duty, as I trust 
in God I always shall, to say something, wher- 
ever I can, in behalf of the victims of false 
systems, the children in this case — the orphans, 
rather, I might say — who inherit the wide 
kingdom of thought, and who toil bitterly in 
secret, in labors not seen of the eye, that the 



world may have enough of mirth and cheerful ' 
truth to make the day wear through. Standing 
here to-night, the representative, in some 
humble measure, of the interests of American 
authors in this question, I say they have been 
treated by this people and government as no 
other of its citizens ; that an enormous fraud 
practised upon their British brethren, has been 
allowed so to operate upon them as to blight 
their hopes and darken their fair fame. They 
have remonstrated, and will, until the evil has 
grown too great to be encountered, or is sub- 
dued. I might speak especially in behalf of 
the company of young native writers, who, 
seeing how well the world was affected toward 
good literature, and moved by some kindly im- 
pulses of nature, may have hoped in their way 
to add something to the happiness, something 
to the renown of their country. But we are 
advised how others, who thought they had se- 
cured a constant and enduring hold on the pub- 
lic good will by past character and services, 
have also been affected by the present injurious 
state of affairs. 

You, sir, for example, in that retreat of yours, 
classical in the world's affections, having ma- 
tured a work of some value and which you 
think ready for the metropolitan market, take 
passage down the Hudson in company with one 
of your farmer neighbors, who has, perhaps, 
just fattened his fall stock to a grain — with 
your manuscript in your pocket — recollecting, 
too, that in times past, your handicraft has been 
held in some repute — you flatter yourself you 
will find a prompt purchaser for whatever you 
bring. You call, sir, on certain traders in ■ 
street, you suggest the MSS. "For heaven's 
sake, Mr. Irving," is the response of the bland- 
est member of the firm, the one that talks to 
the authors, " don't plague us just now; we 
have a profound respect for your talents, an 
ardent affection for American literature; but 
Mr. Bulwer's Zanoni has arrived, and we must 
have a hundred hands on it before night. Call 
again, we shall be happy to see you !" 

Then, sir, meditating on the patriotic cour- 
tesy of the gentleman you have just left, you 
shape your course toward a great publishing 
house in Broadway; famous heretofore for a 
certain solidity and selectness of publication, 
but having been lately bitten by the Number 
viper — which, by the by, is encompassing the 
earth, like the great snake of the Hindoo my- 
thology — they beg you with some natural tears 
in their eyes, not to interrupt them just then; 
"The big papers, the mammoth press, is on 
the alert; they must have < Handy Andy' on 
the counter by Saturday or the tide will be 
down with them;" and behold, sir, the author 
of the Sketch Book, the illustrious historian of 
New York, very much in the situation of the 
ostrich of the desert having an egg to lay, but 
nowhere to lay it ; and, like it, I might add, 
greatly disposed to hide his head for very shame. 
How has it fared sir, in the meantime, with 
your sturdy neighbor and his charge ? In ro- 



_ . J_-J"Jl_ . " - r -±-l 








n 



358 



AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF 



disclaim the charity, and persuade us to pur- 
chase what we read, as well as what we eat 
and wear. 

I have said nothing, sir — and I might have 
said much — of the mutilation of books by our 
American republishes — that outrageous wrong 
by which a noble English writer, speaking 
truths in London dear to him as life, is made 
to say in New York that which his soul abhors. 
This sir, silent and uncomplaining as it seems, 
is a despotism as gross as that of the rack and 
the thumb-screw, which wrings from men un- 
der torture, falsehoods to flatter the tormentor. 
What right have I, sir, to stifle the utterance 
of any manly spirit — to offer him opportunities 
of speech, and then, in bitterest mockery, 
abridge the truth he would deliver? Soul 
speaks to soul through all distances of time 
and space; and accursed should he be that 
ventures to thrust his uncouth shadow as a 
softening medium between the two ! We have 
friendly treaties, Mr. President, by which prop- 
erty and person, as commonly acknowledged, 
are sacred between the two nations. Is it not 
worth the while of statesmen and legislators 
to incorporate hereafter a provision by which 
the great rights of thought, of the soul speak- 
ing in its highest moods, shall be cared for and 
guarded ? 

I desire to see the two sections of Anglo- 
Saxon literature on either side of the great 
ocean moving harmoniously onward; they 
giving to us whatever they have of maturity 
and art, and we returning, as we are bound, 
all of freshness and vigor with which a new 
world may have inspired us. I desire to see 
something of the great debt, now accumulated 
for ages, which we owe to the brotherhood of 
British writers, cancelled; first, in the true 
honest currency of dollars and cents, known to 
the union as the representative value between 
man and man ; secondly, in works of genius, 
the growth of our own soil, colored by our own 
skies, and showing something of the influences 
of a new community, where nature comes fresh 
and mighty to her task. A thousand voices 
now slumber in our vales, amid our cities, and 
along our hill-sides, that only await the genial 
hour to speak and be heard. Silence would no 
longer brood, as it now does, over so many fair 
fields, nor, " moon-like, hold the mighty waters 
fast." Allegany would have a voice, to which 
the metropolis, with its hundred steeples and 
turrets, would answer ; gulf and river, and the 
broad field would reply, each for itself, until 
the broad sky above us should be shaken with 
the thunder tones of master spirits responding 
to each other ; the whole wide land echo from 
side to side with the accents of a majestic 
literature — self-reared, self-sustained, self-vin- 
dicating ! 

I offer you, Mr. President — 

Jn International Copyright — The only honest 
turnpike between the readers of two great na- 
tions. 



AN APPEAL TO 

AMERICAN AUTHORS AND THE 
t AMERICAN PRESS, 

IN BEHALF OF 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

Gentlemen : — You have the credit, at this 
moment, of ruling the world — at least, your 
part of it ; and can not yet enact a single stat- 
ute by which your share of worldly right and 
profit shall be secured to you. Walking, in the 
world's eye, as strong and beautiful as angels, 
you can not perform the day's work, counted 
either in money or in bill-making influence, of 
a rude Missourian or a lean Atlantic citizen. 

Aiding, as you do by your inventive genius, 
in all the great enterprises of the day ; pushing 
forward every great and good undertaking to 
an issue of success ; you lack the will or the 
skill to create a simple mill-contrivance by 
which your grain may be ground and bread fur- 
nished to your board. 

You project, but do not realize. You sow, 
but do not reap. You sail to and fro — mer- 
chantmen and carriers to all the world of 
thought, the whole ocean over — but find no har- 
bor and acquire no return. How much longer 
you will consent to keep the wheels of opinion 
in motion ; to do the better part of the thinking 
and writing of these twenty-six states, without 
hire or fee, it rests with you to say. I merely 
put the case to see how it strikes you. 

I address you in the mass, writers of books 
and framers of paragraphs together, because, 
at bottom, all who wield the pen have inter- 
ests in common, and because I am anxious (I 
confess it) to have the whole force of the press 
whatever shape it takes, combined and consol- 
idated against an injustice which could not 
live an hour if the press knew its rights and its 
strength. The rights and the respectability of 
the one are, in the end, the rights and respect- 
ability of the other ; based in both cases on the 
worth and dignity of literary property. 

No community is secure, it seems to me, 
where any law or fundamental right is system- 
atically violated ; either by instant vindication, 
through blood, and pillage, and massacre, or by 
the more silent and deadlier agency of the oppo- 
site wrong, and a whole brood of fierce allies 
sprung from its loins, is this truth, at all times, 
asserted and made good. From the original 
wrong, lying in many cases close to the heart 
of society, there spreads a secret and invisible 
atmosphere of pestilence, in which all kindred 
rights moulder and decay, until their life at last 
goes out, at a moment when no man had guessed 
at such a result. Neither statesmen nor people 
are, therefore, wise in tampering with a single 
principle, or in yielding a jot of the immutable 
truth to plausible emergency or the fair-seem- 
ing visage of an immediate good. 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



359 



The law of property, in all its relations and 
aspects, is one of these primary anchors and 
fastenings of the social frame. And what evils, 
I am asked, have grown from the alleged neg- 
lect of literary property ? I will mention one, 
by way of illustration. 

You are ail of you aware, by this time, that 
the extensive printing and publishing establish- 
ment of Harper and Brothers, ClifT street, New 
York, was burned in the early part of June, and 
that a heavy loss accrued to them from the 
burning. 

The fire was attributed, immediately after it 
occurred, by the public prints to the hand of de- 
sign. " It is supposed that one object of the in- 
cendiaries was to obtain copies of a new novel by 
James, of which the Messrs. Harper had the ex- 
clusive possession." Another paper enlarges 
this statement ; " We see suspicion expressed 
that the object was to get possession of a new 
novel, ' Morley Ernstein,' which was in sheets, 
for cheap publication." Here is a natural, logi- 
cal sequence, and just such a one as might 
have been expected. If the conjecture should 
not prove a fact, it ought to be one, because 
this is just the period and the very order in 
which we might expect an incident of this kind 
to occur — perhaps not on quite so large a scale 
nor with the necessary melo-dramatic admix- 
ture of fire. It might have been a plain bur- 
glary, prying a warehouse door open with a bar, 
for a copy ; or knocking a man over, at the 
edge of evening, and plucking the sheets from 
under his arm. 

Piracy and burning are perhaps so nearly akin 
that, after all, they have wrought out the se- 
quence more naturally than if it had been left to 
the friends of copyright to suggest to them in what 
order they should occur. In Elia's legend a 
building is burned that a famishing China-man 
may have roast pig ; in the reality of the 
present fire, a publisher's warehouse was put in 
flames, not only to prevent a famishing author 
from having roast pig in prceseyiti, but also, br 
a decisive blow, to further the good principle 
that there should be no roast pig, nay, even salt 
and a radish, for famishing authors in all future 
time. Let it not be said I press this point, a 
mere surmise, too far. Surmise as it is, it re- 
ceives countenance and consistency from a pre- 
vious fact, namely, that one of the large repub- 
lishing newspapers was charged not long since 
by the other — and this was made a matter for 
the sessions — with the felony of abstracting the 
sheets of an English work from the office of its 
rival. This, an invasion of property, is only 
one of the external evils growing out of a false 
and lawless state of things. Of others, which 
strike deeper; which create confusion and er- 
ror of opinion ; which tend to unsettle the lines 
that divide nation from nation ; to obliterate the 
traits and features which give us a characteris- 
tic individuality as a nation ; there will be 
another, and more becoming opportunity to 
speak. 

As it is, by fair means or foul, the weekly 



i newspaper press, with its broad-sheet spread to 
I the breeze, is making great head against the 
slow-sailing progress of such as trust to the 
more regular trade-winds for their speed. And 
this, fortunately (as error can not long abide in 
itself), is creating changes of opinion of infinite 
advantage to the great cause of international 
copyright. 

A little while ago we had the publishers pe- 
titioning and declaiming against an Internation- 
al copyright (I forget what arguments they em- 
ployed), and, lo ! their breath is scarcely spent 
when the ground slides from under them, and 
the whole publishing business — at least, a con- 
siderable section of it, which they meant to 
uphold by false and hollow props — has tumbled 
into chaos, and an organic change has passed 
through the world of publication. Now they 
begin — and we are glad to have so powerful 
and so respectable a body converts to our side, 
on whatever terms — to see the matter in a new 
light. The affection for the people, and the 
cheap enlightenment of the people and the peo- 
ple's wives and children, which they made bold 
(out of an exceeding philanthropy) to proclaim 
in marketplaces and the lobbies of congress, is 
wonderfully dwindled. 

It is not a pleasant thing, after all, to have 
one's printing-house and bindery burned to the 
ground, even for so laudable an object. Sup- 
pose we have the law ; a little civilized recog- 
nition of the rights of authors (merely by way 
of clincher, however, to the absolute, primary, 
and indefeasible rights of publishers) might be 
an agreeable change from this barbarous sys- 
tem of non-protection. The old plan, it must 
be admitted, has its disadvantages. Let's 
have the law. And here you may suppose the 
hats of certain old, respected, and enterprising 
publishers, to rise into the air, in a sort of fer- 
vor or ecstacy, which it is entirely out of their 
power to control. 

Is there, or is there not, a property in a book 
— a primitive, real, fundamental, right in its 
ownership, as in any estate or property ? Often 
and clearly as this question has been determin- 
ed, the opponents of a law, by stress of argu- 
ment, are driven upon denying it over and over 
again, and making use of every sort of ridiculous 
and irrelevant illustration to crowd the right 
out of the way. They fly into all corners of 
creation in pursuit of an analogy, and come 
back without as much as a sparrow in their 

bag. 

One of them, for example, says, " We buy a 
new foreign book ; it is ours ; we multiply cop- 
ies and diffuse its advantages. We also buy a 
bushel of foreign wheat, before unknown l 
we cultivate, increase it, and spread Hi 
over the country. Where is the difference P 
If one ii steeling the oilier h Hi ! 

neither is Stealing. They are both preitl 
thy acts, beneficial to mankind, injurious to no- 
body, right and just in then com- 

mendable in the sight of God." Thl 

of a pious inclination, and most excellent 



360 



AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF 



al tendencies, has made but a single error. He 
thinks the type, stitching, and paper, are the 
book ! He forgets that when you buy a book 
you do not buy the whole body of its thoughts 
in their entire breadth and construction, to be 
yours in fee simple, for all uses (if you did the 
vender would be guilty of a fraud in selling 
more than a single copy of any one work), but 
simply the usufruct of the book as a reader. 
Any processes of your own mind, exerted upon 
that work or parts of it, make the result, so far, 
your legitimate property, and is one of the inci- 
dents of your purchase. To reprint the work 
in any shape, as a complete, symmetrical com- 
position, is a violation of the original contract, 
between the vender and yourself; whether it 
be in folio or duodecimo, in the form of news- 
paper or pamphlet, there lies the book, un- 
changed by any action of your own mind. The 
wheat, of which you have purchased the bush- 
el, in the meantime, has been sown in your 
field (there's a difference to begin), which has 
been prepared by your plough and plough-horse 
for its reception, the kindly dews and rains of 
heaven, which would answer to the genial in- 
spirations and movements of the mind, in the 
other case, descend upon it ; it is guarded by 
walls and hedges from inroad; the weeds and 
tares which would fain choke it are plucked out 
by a careful hand ; at last it is reaped and gath- 
ered in by the harvestman to his garners. 

The one bushel has become a thousand ; but 
it has passed through a thousand appropriating 
and fructifying processes, to swell it to that ex- 
tent. It has not been merely poured out of one 
bushel-measure into another bushel-measure. 

Though the one plough the earth, and the 
other plough the sea, the world will recognise 
a distinction, a delicate line of demarcation, 
between farmer (man's first occupation) and 
pirate (his last). The republishers — the pro- 
prietors of the mammoth press — groan under 
the aspersion of piracy and pillage laid at their 
door. They complain of the harshness of epi- 
thet which denounces them as Kyds and Mac 
Gregors. They must bear in mind that authors 
and republishers are likely to consider this ques- 
tion from very different points of view ; that 
the poor writer, regarding himself as defrauded 
of a positive right and of a property as real and 
substantial as guineas, or dollars, or doubloons, 
may feel a soreness, of which the other par- 
ty, living as he does on the denial of that 
right and the seizure of that property, with- 
out charge or cost, may not be quite as suscep- 
tible. Let us make an effort to bring this 
point home to these gentlemen, in an obvious 
and intelligible illustration. 

How would the worthy proprietors of " The 
Brother Jonathan" like it, if, when their edition 
of Barnaby Rudge or Zanoni had been care- 
fully worked off at some expense of composi- 
tion, paper, and press-work, and lay ready fold- 
ed, in their office for delivery ; how would they 
be pleased if just at that moment, when the 
news-boys were gathered at the office door 



pitching their throats for the new cry, a gang 
of stout-handed fellows should descend upon 
their premises and without as much as " by 
your leave," or " gentlemen, an you will !" 
sweep the entire edition off — bear it into the 
next street, and there proceed to issue and 
vend it, with the utmost imaginable steadiness 
of aspect; with an equanimity of demeanor 
quite edifying and perfect. Why, gentlemen, 
to speak the truth plainly, you would have a 
hue-and-cry around the corner in an instant ! 
Your ejaculations of thief, robber, and burglar, 
would know no pause till you were compelled 
to give out for very lack of breath; and the 
whole community would be startled, at its 
breakfast the next morning by an appeal to its 
moral sensibilities so loud and lightning-like, 
that the coffee would be unpalatable and the 
very toast turn to a cinder in the mouth. 

Now it should be borne in mind that the 
large weekly press, whose influence we are 
anxious to counteract, and whose interest is 
rapidly becoming the leading one in opposition 
to the proposed law — has arisen since the agi- 
tation of this question ; has embarked its capi- 
tal, and has grown to its present power and 
influence in the very teeth of a solemn protest 
of the authors whose labors they appropriate. 
It should also, in fairness, be added that some 
members of this huge fraternity only avail 
themselves of the law as it now stands, as they 
think they have a right, and hold themselves 
ready to abandon the field or adapt themselves 
to the change whenever a new law requires it ; 
in the meantime meeting the question fairly 
and reasoning it through in good temper. The 
very paper which I have employed in illustra- 
tion is chargeable with no offence against litera- 
ture, society, or good morals, save the single 
taint of appropriating the labors of authors 
without pay, and defending the appropriation 
as matter of strict right and propriety. Only 
in a community where a contempt for literary 
rights has been engendered by long malprac- 
tice could such sentiments have obtained a 
lodgment in minds of general fairness and 
honesty. 

If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copy- 
right be as deep-seated as is alleged, why has 
there not been some able argument (raised 
above sordid considerations and looking wide 
and far upon the question in all its vast bear- 
ings), expounding to us the grounds on which 
this professed antagonism is based. When we 
ask them for a syllogism they give us an asser- 
tion. " My dear sir, how can you waste time, 
perplexing yourself and the public with this 
barren question ! We supply readers with a 
novel, a good 3 vol. novel, for a shilling ; and 
as long as we can do that they will remain 
deaf to all your appeals. The argumentum 
ad crumenam, the syllogism of the pocket, has 
in all ages carried the sway !" This is the head 
and front of their declamation, of their invective 
and their facts. This is the fact ! This boulder 
(offered in lieu of bread), they beg us of the 



7EKNATIOXAL COPYRIGHT. 

author-tribe to digest; this is their Wwvk, [ Trath nd 

an 

:: 



UrT ftoato i: Ac approach ;•;' ■ | 
, quill in iand, prepared to dose oc 
game— far* arts/* — that lay waste Lis pre- 
freeia 

Now of ail 

I: 




it siay lead as. tor tt is is 
llay as a eaatiag aaaker: 
hold as the trap of the seafidd the Mie be- 

Cieap and Good ire 
■tit 
that tier aiwajs do bosiaess together. Ta^^u- 




a riarter,: tie 
ii-i --.- :-i: = 
of the apper world into Itos 
tbar shifliags a week) ; hb hat, 1 
the cheap tendeaer has followed hiss oat of 
xeetj ia coospaay with a coat re- 

daslssaa, veal :: Mich i-_ basei hnnd ::' 

•-: i ~z-:zz: :,^ii i :■: - : •.-■: ::"..-: :: 
the earth at aa expense of ave 
tor repairs, hi laspraaei fee 
of which he is the sesias— fee saeer heiae « 




zc'iz L=. i_i ;o:i;:. i_: :e-i--- :f. - * -_-.:-- 
:ri.i : •'■.:■ „--..: ::" i :.-_;-:- :>--; :-•:•:::- 

of America- Who woaki bare the heart or 

- .: : i:..;: ■.■: :.; :.:: u".: ."i- ".:: -r ::' 




of adrxarize we are 



if erea as wide as tie >^c- 

::' iL* T-::;t— I i:.: 
at I aa act 



.: _i 



■Ihi no<±izz. they 5i^id bear sasssad that 

there is a place where it is paid ibr, or it 

sassi aanarcdhj pseac is ■iacxahle as i: is < 

7- 

they 

e-rery Sa aaiday rp.- : v. a: a il p a a n a 

^ :7'1 
.: warfe 




i pal k; ■ 

-.. r :".:_ :::; i .i i_ . if: 

la w~w7I ' create 90* " nim ? Hat at alL 

ii^f :: vv::;- iir..:- :b:.:.-?.ts :: ^ ::•:_ 

hejht aad 

iwi 




a be 
of thebrowa 

afl us 



m x 



the _ 

(deaied to then ia aay great amat by 

tare), of pay. It is the shiaiag geld, decry 

as we ssajj 

Itmaxbe; 

:...... -. rafters, ■ affected ... ■taliiu 

the writers of hooks; tor the hoad by 

he eatire brotherhood it hekt together 

aad is so dose that it eaa act be strack ia aay 

art withoat frrKag; the shack ia its whaie 

iajoalaa hf vbiah the aa- 



Iha 



the rob dtoi Uk -z 



;c" aa aacieaa sheet, a are nghti ia coa 
doady rypoeraphT, aad a strie of thoaghl aad aad ai they may be adected Crocs tj 



tora toe 

of all who «e the pea 
^g oaly ia degree 




rate with the eatire ] 

a rate r What if it did sat last a 



dtoi Ha 



be felt by the dairy aad weekly press ; they 
d* torai Ike artidt cr 



win can 



m Ha cheep 



362 



LECTURE ON 



field or joining in a pernicious system of unpaid 
appropriation against which their better judg- 
ment revolts. 

I now close this appeal, and in doing so I 
would venture to urge upon you the importance 
of concert and a steady action in behalf of 
this law, at all times and in all places where 
you are called on to employ that sacred instru- 
ment of thought, whose immunities are so 
grossly outraged. 

The popular mind has, in this country, made 
wonderful advances in the appreciation of po- 
litical truths and principles. There is no rea- 
son why it should not make an equal — though, 
perhaps, a later — progress in truths that relate 
to literature and art. The popular mind, as 
all our institutions require, is essentially just 
and true ; and, once enlightened by a sufficient 
array of facts and with time to arrange and 
digest them, will act with energy and wisdom 
on this as on all other questions of which it is 
the arbiter. Depend upon it, this bill, although 
adversely regarded by your senate and repre- 
sentatives at this time, will ultimately triumph. 
It will go up to the senate-chamber, year after 
year, with new facts, pleading for it with an 
urgency which considerate legislators can not 
resist. In the meantime it is your duty, as I 
trust it is your desire, to enlighten the general 
mind as to the truths on which I have ventured 
to insist. Seize the instant. In town, in home- 
stead and city, let these principles be spread as 
wide as the writings they would protect ; and 
search, with a fearless eye, the national heart, 
to find whether there be not some kindly corner 
where it is willing the seeds of a national 
literature should be lodged. Speaking in the 
accents of persuasion with which God and na- 
ture have endowed you, and through the or- 
gans of opinion which every one of you may, 
more or less, command — you can not be long 
resisted. Together in a phalanx, before which 
kings and princes grow pale, enter upon the 
mighty task. Hand in hand, voice answering 
to voice, in tones of mutual trust and cheerful 
hope press forward in the noble labor to which 
you are summoned. That union which, in 
politics and war, is strength, will prove in litera- 
ature, as well, your champion and deliverer. 

New York, June, 1842. 



THE BETTER INTERESTS OF THE 
COUNTRY, 

IN CONNEXION WITH AN 

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

A Lecture delivered at the. Lecture-room of the 
Society Library, Feb. 2, 1843. 

From the moment when the peak of Harvard 
college, in New England, cut the sky — twenty 
years only after the first permanent foot Was 
planted on the continent — America was pre- 
destined to be a nation of readers. That early 



promise and destiny she is amply fulfilling. She 
reads in the cradle and the college ; in the pack- 
et and upon the highway. The doors of a thou- 
sand Jyceums are cast open and readers throng 
in. She reads in the hut, the tavern, and the 
stage-coach. She pauses at the corners and 
reads again ; and as the swift spirit of steam 
snatches her from her feet and bears her away, 
she still turns the page and reads what she can. 
Her youth, her manhood, her age, are all busy 
at the task. Her decrepitude and her strength, 
her pale scholars and her carmen — sturdy and 
gowned as well, are classmates in the common 
pursuit. The forms are full wherever the eye 
ranges ; and the rustle of leaves, as they turn, 
fills the air, from the schoolhouse on the edge 
of Memphremagog to the deck that floats upon 
the Mexican gulf. 

It is therefore of vital consequence that she 
read aright. Having no central standards of 
opinion, no fixed classes as examples and guides, 
her mind is the result of a constant intercom- 
munication of part with part, section with sec- 
tion, through the press. The general sum of 
her reading represents and controls her thoughts, 
her habits, and her government. Her institu- 
tions, modelled originally on the necessities of 
her situation in place, time, and progress of 
opinion, must be either sustained by a litera- 
ture (meaning by literature in this connexion, 
whatever is circulated in a printed form) as- 
similating with these, or be modified by anoth- 
er literature which is too rigid to coalesce, and 
strong enough to break in pieces and appropri- 
ate to itself whatever it approaches. 

It might happen, for a time, that the outward 
form of government, and daily habit of action 
would continue, while the mind, the heart, and 
spirit, would be changed and strangered within. 
A dreadful spectacle. A great nation stagger- 
ing on, by a sort of instinct, in its old paths, 
blind, purposeless, maniacal ! The body re- 
taining its springday vigor, lusty, full of an am- 
bitious strength; and yet, within, a mind at jar 
with its powers— working through all the limbs 
a deadly change, and giving to its aspect the 
look of one who wanders in the dark, by the 
edge of stormy seas, that may swallow him up, 
or among enemies, whose cold shadow he feels 
stealing upon him, to stab him if he pause. 

The education of the American people lies, 
after all, in what they read ; the soul, that gov- 
erns its acts, enters through the eye that dwells 
upon the printed page. Now, in its growth, 
in the susceptible and plastic period of youth, 
it should have a wise regard to the influences 
to which it subjects itself; most of all to such 
as steal upon it in silence and without warn- 
ing of their approach. 

Out of the past come voices of triumph and 
encouragement ; in the future gleam eyes of 
hopeful invitation and welcome ; but the pres- 
ent, the time that is upon us and about us, is 
thick-set with dangers. A steady foot, a re- 
gard fixed constantly upon the true lights and 
standards of our course, can only carry us for- 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



363 



ward. We should not wander into other spheres, 
into other quarters of the sky, to take an obser- 
vation of our path. Over our own home lies 
the heaven to which we must look for guidance 
and for omens. 

As a great nation, standing in the very front 
rank of the guides and examples of mankind, 
America should desire to possess a literature, 
whether foreign or native, only under the broad- 
est and clearest sanctions of right and justice. 

Already it is whispered through the world 
that she is false to the high faith she professes. 
It is muttered from corner to corner of Europe 
that she can violate, on the very spot made sa- 
cred by many trials and sacrifices of an heroic 
stamp, the clear obligations of man to man, 
community to community. She owes it to her- 
self and to the great cause of which she is an 
acknowledged representative, to stand forth, 
and, gathering her pure robes about her, repel, 
by instant action, aspersions so unworthy of 
her faith and her fame. When I think of Amer- 
ica, as she should be, she always rises before 
me a majestic personation — colossal, steadfast, 
heavenward and noble in her look, and tower- 
ing infinitely above base usages and habitudes of 
gross creatures. But when I regard her in some 
of her acts, she seems shrunken from these 
great proportions, crouched meanly upon the 
earth, and peering, with a starved and guilty 
look, among cinders and fragments for some 
pittance, which she would fain clutch and guard 
as a precious inheritance. It has been said that 
England should place this question of the au- 
thor's right on the true ground before she 
claims anything at our hands ; that she should 
recognise, as she has failed to, the perpetual, 
indefeasible right of an author in his work, be- 
fore she demands any part of that right from 
us. What matters it to us whether England 
or all the world fail in justice, shall it stay us 
in the path of truth and duty ? We have not 
withdrawn into this new world, far from the 
strifes of old centuries, packed close with usage 
and injustice, to be cumbered with the doings 
or undoings of others. We are here, between 
ocean and ocean, to lead a life as pure, to ad- 
minister examples as great, as God grants us 
strength to render. If we are the first to restore 
to an injured class rights long withheld, to place 
the author upon his feet, to clothe him in the 
garment that becomes his station and pursuit — 
so be it ! We can claim no higher honor, no 
profounder glory, than to have so done. 

A gentleman who has acquired distinction as 
an historian, lately standing in a lecture-desk, 
in this city, expressed a doubt whether there 
could be a property or exclusive right in intel- 
lectual aad spiritual results. Thoughts and 
ideas were of a part with the sun and air, as 
free and universal as they. Now, it must have 
been within that gentleman's knowledge, that 
the sun and air themselves, when incorporated 
in specific results, certain chymical compounds, 
for example, can be subjects Of proper! y as clear- 
ly as a hat upon one's head, or the house over 



us. He must have known, also, as a wise and 
diligent reader of scripture, that there are dis- 
tinctions of person and character, even among 
the spiritual beings of a higher world, some be- 
ing ranged in classes and others known special- 
ly by name. The very angels have an identity 
of their own, in act and thought, over which 
they may be supposed to exercise the control of 
intelligent creatures. On this very truth, that 
each creature, each angel, and each man, has 
an individual property in whatever constitutes 
his better being, hangs the immortality of the 
soul itself. If thought were held in common 
by all mankind, there could be, in effect, but 
one man — one being with multiform limbs and 
organs and a single soul, in possession of the 
globe. It is in the doctrine of a personal iden- 
tity, an individual and exclusive right to certain 
elements and issues of thought and feeling, now 
and henceforward for ever, that the pains and 
penalties, the hopes and alarms of a present 
and a future being have their hold. This new 
dream of the universal commonness of soul and 
thought, would fill the universe with God and 
void it of his creatures. One should have a 
care, in indulging the speculations of so bound- 
less a philanthropy, upon what shoals he may 
be driven ! It may cost a greater outlay of 
wind and sail to get back, than the original 
chart of the voyage contemplated ! 

If I may throw open literary property to all 
the world, why not all other property ? If there 
may be an allowable agrarianism of ideas, why 
not of acres and tenements as well I What 
would be the result if all the farms and estates 
in America were to-morrow made common, we 
can, in a measure, guess. There would follow, 
as these very reasoners should know, a grand 
disruption of society. I have a shrewd notion, 
that the gentlemen who claim to have thought 
out the author's book in common with him, 
employing him only as secretary to the commis- 
sion, may be of the very lineage and creed with 
those who claim as a right one eye of the au- 
thor's spectacles and one sleeve of his coat. 
The world has not yet answered to itself in the 
consequences, for the unjust distinction it has 
chosen to make between the property of the 
head and the hand. Not a slight part of the 
disasters of kingdoms, in later times may, in 
my humble judgment, be charged upon the un- 
just and uncertain tenure by which authors an 1 
governors of opinion have been allowed to hold 
their rights, and the false conditions under 
which they have, on this account, labored. T he 
world prospers best when to each man it allots 
his right and protects him in it. SoOfl 
later the right here, as always, will via 
itself. 

I worn you, I warn yon not to withhold this 

law. Then art portents Already in Lkeeky; 
sounds, eohoing audibly along die earth] vol 

CCS in the air, that tell us that the thoughts of 
two nations can not min-le and become tfl one 
without law, with impunity. The quitfti 
catches the clashing of hostile opinions tiki 



364 



LECTURE ON 



the eye, strained anxiously upon the future, 
discerns floating into the horizon a dark hulk 
of alien thoughts, whieh, bearing down upon 
its dear and deep-freighted hopes, with a shock 
silently given, strikes them to the bottom and 
rides smoothly over their wreck. 

1 do not deny, I would not be so understood, 
that the noble literature of England, old and 
new, introduced among us under the sanctions 
of justice, and with a proper recognition of the 
author's right, would be of eminent service to 
the American people. We have arrived at a 
point in the progress of the world, where it be- 
comes us to make use of every help, lawfully 
within our reach, to sustain us in the position 
we would maintain. What there is in that lit- 
erature to cheer, to enlighten, to move, and sus- 
tain, the spirit of a great nation, no man here 
need be told. Every footfall within its sacred 
range, answers in an echo of proud remem- 
brance ; every hand laid upon its records, re- 
turns us from the leaves a musical and familiar 
voice that binds us there. But if on every page 
there lies spread the palm of the purloiner ; if 
in every path we encounter the face of the re- 
publisher without right; if, at the bottom of 
all, there lurks a wrong and an injustice, de- 
pend upon it, so surely as the great heavens 
are over us and the great rivers by our city- 
walls flow to the sea, we will grow, truly, none 
the wiser nor prosper the more, by every or any 
English book that comes so branded to our 
hands. It may be good, noble, lofty ; may car- 
ry us, seemingly to the very heart of truth, the 
very heaven of all pure fancies ; but while en- 
joyed under these false conditions, all our prof- 
it will, somehow or other, and according to an 
everlasting law, turn to loss ; all our progress 
bring us back, through a blind round, to the 
dull goal from which we set out. 

To bring these considerations to bear upon 
the immediate question of an international copy- 
right, I first remark, that an inevitable proof 
that the present system of relying upon and 
appropriating a foreign literature is false, lies 
in the vast number of minor evils (which, like 
the testimony of circumstances, can not err) to 
which it gives birth. 

What is the process by which in regulated 
times and countries where the cheap enlighten- 
ment of the people is not a theory of publish- 
ers, a book is brought before the world ? Not 
assuredly in a spasm — such as nature gives 
when she throws off her evil humors — but by 
some kind of orderly procedure. The work 
having grown up in the author's mind, slowly 
and with a calm reliance, it might be hoped, on 
a just judgment from his peers, is announced 
as on its way to the public eye. Attention is 
fixed upon it from that distance ; if a work of 
research, the studies of scholars and men of 
letters are made to run parallel with it, and 
when at length it is yielded to the world, it is 
received with no idle and boisterous haste, but 
becomes the subject of a close analysis and de- 
liberate opinion. At all points the author's 



rights are regarded; having grown up under 
the author's eye from the beginning, his fame 
is well considered ; and in the end the book 
takes it place according to some standard of 
judgment among others of iB class. All this 
is and has been from the earliest time reversed 
in America. Here an author is an anomaly; a 
needless excrescence of nature ; a make-trouble 
and mar-plot, a mere impertinence. A book is 
supposed to grow up by some sort of sponta- 
neous process beyond the seas, and to be im- 
ported into this country with rutabaga and the 
yellow hop. Pursuant to this enlightened and 
liberal view of the matter, there were establish- 
ed, a good while ago, certain baronial castles, 
keeps, and places of look-out, whence the re- 
spective masters might look abroad, each 
upon the domain he had engrossed. There 
was the barony of Cliff-street on the one 
hand, which included the Pelham vineyards, 
the barony of Chestnut-street, Philadelphia, 
which overlooked the Waverly manors, and 
the Boston barony, with extensive water-rights 
and rights of piscary (as the courts say) in 
Marryat. Nothing could be more cheerful 
than to see the various lord-heritors of these 
great domains ascending to the castle-top, and 
with a lordly and benignant eye, regarding the 
toilers in their respective grounds so nicely 
parcelled off. 

" Ah, ha !" one of them would say ; " see how 
the sweat pours from old Sir Walter ! That's 
a sturdy old fellow, and the blades grow double 
wherever he treads !" 

The Post captain drags the net and ploughs 
the sea quite as satisfactorily ; and Sir Edward 
Bulwer, being of a lighter build, makes up in 
activity what he lacks in muscle. Could any- 
thing go on more agreeably ! Certainly not, 
as long as these book-barons understand each 
other ; but every now and then they must have 
a frisk (getting jolly on the good wine served 
to them out of authors' skulls) and harry into 
each other's fields with a vengeance ! Then 
there's a time ! Such a crying out of courtesy 
and lack of courtesy ! Such a babblement of 
rights and usages ! Such a devout and monas- 
tic horror of the infringement of publishers' 
privileges all through Cliff street and Chestnut 
and Washington, it makes one's blood run cold 
to think of it ! And among them all is heard 
every once and a while the tenor of Sir Edward 
Lytton, the piping cry of the Captain, or the 
feeble voice of old Sir Walter, growing every 
moment fainter, beseeching, in heaven's name, 
to be thought of in all this fray to the amount 
of a day's wages or two, and something to keep 
the life in them while they are in the field ! 

Certainly, certainly, this is an anomalous 
case for logicians of an ordinary understanding 
and discernment to deal with. Here, it is al- 
leged, that the principals, the authors them- 
selves, have no rights whatever in the products 
of their brain ; yet, somehow or other, it hap- 
pens that their agents, factors, and underlings, 
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366 



LECTURE ON 



other, into a great mill or mangle, where books 
of a better sort should be tortured with an in- 
genious cruelty, dislocated in every page, brok- 
en and fractured in every paragraph, beaten 
lifeless of all meaning and thrown upon the 
world mangled and maimed, at the mercy of 
every chance reader who has a shilling to be- 
stow. At the top of this I might, after pocket- 
ing, or boasting to have pocketed on one of 
these republished productions, the year's wages 
of an honest man, I might turn upon my bene- 
factor, whose abject and miserable creature I 
was (for I was fed from his hand), and call 
him " knave," " fool," and " villain," with a 
volubility that could only be construed into 
madness by a generous man. I might even, in 
the plenitude of a genius for great and noble 
obliquities, go a step beyond this ; if I found 
any fellow-countryman, one who had happened 
by some great good or evil fortune to have 
drawn the same breath with me, rising up, and 
in the tone and accent of a man, denouncing, 
without hope of interest or reward, with no un- 
worthy or ungenerous motive, all this as paltry, 
unjust, and thankless, [ might (having the 
board and lodging, the annual stipend, and 
the low-hung curricle still in view) proceed to 
vilify and asperse that countryman by every 
low art in my power ; I might belie his acts, 
misquote his writings, scorn his friends — I 
might go even farther ; I might ride from office 
to office in my low-hung curricle, and entreat 
various conductors of the public press in God's 
name to do a little vilification in my behalf in 
their respective daily, weekly, and monthly 
organs of opinion ! I might be spurned from 
some, cowed down by a manly indignation at 
others, or, perchance, have an unwilling wel- 
come lent at others. What then ? There's my 
low-hung curricle, my weekly allowance and 
the board and lodging secured, and I would 
even go on as I had begun. Nature having 
denied to me the generous spirit of a brigand 
or pirate of the main, I will be the tame villain 
of civilized life, the slasher of native reputa- 
tion, the stipendiary slanderer of writers be- 
yond the sea ! 

This is the legitimate spawn of the repub- 
lishing system ; and it is under such auspices 
that a portion of the American mind is now 
forming. All along the western border works 
framed and issued by hands like this are scat- 
tered, and make their way, unchecked by purer 
influences. There, in many places, no native 
author ever pleads the cause of his country — is 
ever allowed the pure and great privilege of in- 
stilling into the young heart fancies, or hopes, 
or warnings, that have grown up in his own, 
under the same free sky. 

The evil spirit has there its undisturbed 
sway ! Are you willing that the public service 
shall be employed in thus deadening and stupe- 
fying one mighty limb of the general good ? 
Does it not occur to you that other seed should 
be sown, other harvests gathered, than that 
great field now receives and ripens ? The 



cause of one is the cause of all ; and what 
they derive of unmixed injury in their new es- 
tate, we, in an elder condition, draw in, quali- 
fied, but by no means neutralized. With them, 
the false literature stands by itself, a single 
growth ; with us, it strikes down a better plant 
that strives to lift its head. 

No one will be hardy enough to deny, I think, 
that American literature is virtually stifled un- 
der the operation of such a system. God for- 
bid that I should not believe that great souls 
may be born among us, still — equal to this or 
any disastrous crisis — able to front it, and ad- 
dressing it in the tones of high and passionate 
natures, bid it be stayed for a while. Men 
who, in the face of disaster and suffering, and 
the hard oppression of a country that knows 
them not, and hears them not, by a slow and 
generous toil, raise up images of greatness and 
beauty in our midst, not recognised at first by 
the bewildered eye, but whose silent presence 
comes at length to be known and felt, and to 
form a part of the national life. ..Others, who 
people the common air with our fellow-citizens 
of fiction, nobler than truth ; and others, again, 
who, masters of a divine patience, in silence 
and amid dark discouragements, weave through 
society and the disorders of a new and troub- 
lous state, the threads of a true belief that 
bind together and brighten all. These, God be 
thanked ! are so near akin to high spirits of 
another sphere, that hunger nor thirst, nor the 
keen wind can stay them from performing the 
golden circuit on which they are bound — from 
bearing the glad message they are charged to 
deliver to mankind. 

But it is of another and lower race that I now 
make question ; and I ask, where is the com- 
mon body of American authors to be found ? 
how are they employed ? 

I will not say in what cobwebbed lawyer's 
dens ; in what editorial cribs reeking aud damp 
with papers brought from far and wide, piled 
to the very wall ; on what high stools at bank- 
ers' desks, the younger brood swarms and 
makes trial of the daily quill ; but of the ac- 
knowledged and recognised tribe, whose names 
run so trippingly from the tongue and form the 
picturesque tail of the great paper-kite that 
national self-love sends up from day to day. 
With one or two exceptions, these refrain alto- 
gether from bestowing upon the public regular 
and complete works, books in one volume or 
two, carefully elaborated, and claiming the 
general attention by the patient genius with 
which they have been wrought out. On the 
contrary, they are discovered by whoever looks 
for them, moving rapidly about among certain 
painted booths — the fashionable magazines — 
running in and out with their crisp bundles of 
manuscript, and partaking of such hurried 
hospitality as the master of the booth can 
afford. 

Sometimes they are placed at the head of the 
table with a story in three courses before them; 
others are thrust into a corner to mumble a 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



367 



sonnet ; and others, again, ramble up and down 
where they choose, regaling themselves out of 
a neat paper of powdered maccaroni. One 
gentleman, in other words, furnishes a most 
moving and pathetic tale of a riband or a lace- 
veil — another, a light and airy poem of senti- 
ment about nothing ; and, another, the delight- 
ful history of Arthur Melton, and all his 
agreeably common-place love passages with 
the charming young lady heroine, Helen Edge- 
combe. 

This is American literature ; the literature 
of one of the foremost nations of the earth ; 
the literature of a country that gave birth, 
only a little while ago, to the man George 
Washington, and issued the Declaration of In- 
dependence to the world. Let no one suppose 
I do not entertain a respect and admiration — 
proportioned to their merits — for many of the 
writers engaged in the fashionable magazines, 
or that I would cast unnecessary censure upon 
those at the head of the periodical publications 
in question. They are all common sufferers in 
an unhappy state of things. 

For the evils of that system they may justly 
point to the law and the public taste ; for the 
advances upon its earlier condition they may 
take credit to themselves. But none of these 
circumstances can shut from view the fact 
that the active, immediate, current literature 
of America, is to be found at this moment, in 
certain popular magazines, fronted with fashion- 
plates, and brought up at the rear with an 
overwhelming array of authors' names, in capi- 
tal letters. 

This is the condition of a province ; of some 
little, obscure petty state, ashamed to show its 
head among nations, and capable of subsisting 
on the very stalks and husks of literature. If 
it be not an object with us to escape out of this 
low flat, this Chinese garden of all that is pet- 
ty and absurd in letters ; if we can dwell con- 
tentedly there ; and if the national energy and 
dignity of character should fail to yield under 
the accumulated evils of a system like this, we 
may fairly count upon ourselves as a nation of 
tranquil philosophic thinkers, destined lo en- 
dure for ever — an everlasting model of self- 
satisfied debasement to the world ! 

This can not, however, hinder the admission, 
that this country is, in literature, at the present 
time, a dependency of Great Britain. It has 
every mark and characteristic of that servile 
condition. In the first place it relies for its 
very literature of amusement — which, if any, 
should be self-supplied— on a distant country. 
It pauses before it makes up its historical rec- 
ords for the researches of hostile scholars. It 
borrows the learning of antiquity through the 
factorship of compilers, farther distant than 
the seats and fountains of antiquity themselves. 
It appropriates without credit, in many cases, 
its fiction, in some its divinity, in others, its 
learning ; it imitates, without stint, the pro- 
ductions it can not honestly rival. Wanting 
in the healthy tastes of an original and produc- 



tive people, it selects, not infrequently, the 
worst parts of the literature it appropriates. 
It has on every and all of these accounts, 
neither head, nor limbs, nor proper powers of 
motion, but tumbles about upon the stage of 
its existence a sort of idiotic monster, whose 
purposeless look and gaping mouth, craving 
everything, sets the looker-on into a roar. This 
it is to be a province and appanage in litera- 
ture ; and it is to this condition that we bind 
ourselves by law. 

Instead of this, what might we, reasonably, 
have counted upon ? Not a mature, harmo- 
nious, complete literature ; but works at least 
spontaneous in their growth, and akin, in some 
measure, to the life of man in a world full of 
suggestive newness both to eye and spirit. 
Rugged they might have been as the mountains 
and cataracts among which they were produced ; 
mere ballads, echoing the cry of enemies with- 
drawing into the shadow of the wood, or wel- 
coming the advent of the stranger-ship over 
the rough sea-billow. Something of a lusty 
strength — the vigor of a manly and rough-nur- 
tured prime — should have seized upon the 
share and driven it a-field. A certain gran- 
deur of thought, a wild, barbaric splendor it 
may have been, should have shot forth its fires 
on every side, and made the wilderness to glow 
in the forge-light of high passion and thoughts, 
coultered to and fro with a giant's hand. Not 
here — not here at least — should the soul of 
man, in one of its noblest employments, have 
shown itself cramped, servile, abject, and ob- 
sequious to custom. Here, where the free 
spirit lifts its head and speaks what it will, it 
should have something more to say. 

There are grounds, lying in the very depth 
of our necessities, from which a hope arises 
that our literature might have a peculiar force 
and truth of its own. The very nakedness of 
our new condition, depriving us of all aid from 
the picturesque combinations of society, might 
be reasonably expected to drive us upon a pro- 
founder delineation of the inner life ; the secret 
of which seems to have been lost, with rare 
and distant exceptions, with the great dramatic 
writers. The number of our newspapers, read 
so widely, and making known every particular 
of actual life, would have a similar influence, 
and compel our authors to a higher and pro- 
founder exercise of inventive genius. 

And here, too, should authorship, the writing 
of books, be a noble pursuit. Claiming, 
do, to be a nation of thinkers, it does not be* 
come us to degrade the parents and guides of 
opinion into an abject class. RecogaisL 
them the men who, by sagacious foresight and 
a wise fancy, widen for us the grefJ future up- 
on which we are tattling, we should clothe 
them in fair apparel and smooth their lock- 
with a considerate hand. Above all rank 
station, above presidencies and principalities, 
should the men he raised, who cultivate nnd 

raise up in us faculties of thought, and ps 

and will, before which all this show of ! 



368 



LECTURE ON 



and temple, and monument, dwindles to a pur- 
poseless shadow. A government of opinion 
lives in the soul of its authors and teachers. 
Out of that alone it can draw its true life ; and 
beyond that, it holds its existence a prey to 
swift confusion, to blood, and disorder, and an- 
gry riot. Upon them, then, her best influences 
should be shed; she should strive to spread 
abroad through their path, peace, bounty, and 
content, that her own way may partake of a 
kindred calm. 

What results, then, do I expect to flow from 
the passage of a proper law ? 

I can not presume to predict, in detail, what 
these might be, nor the exact form they may 
assume. They will be, doubtless, great in num- 
ber ; great, perhaps, beyond the sanguiue ex- 
pectations of its advocates. A single remark 
would embrace, in effect, the purpose of all 
I could say : — The spirit of wise legislation 
would act like the creative law, breathing 
truth and order among the elements of confu- 
sion. It will reconcile, renew, separate, and 
combine, so subtly, that no eye could foresee 
all its operations. Among the expected chan- 
ges I would venture to mention : 

Firstly; the entire reorganization of the 
book-trade ; at present, as I have shown, in a 
great measure dismembered and broken. A 
legitimate and honorable class of publishers 
would spring up, to take charge as well of the 
interests of the foreign author, having copy- 
right in this country, as of the domestic writer. 
An increased interest in the writings of native 
authors would, of course, be created ; and 
Amercan books would be placed before the 
public in such form and through such channels 
as to command their share of attention. The 
relation of author and publisher would be re- 
stored to something like its old conditions : el- 
evated, it might be hoped, by a more intelli- 
gent spirit of dealing. Authors and publish- 
ers both thrive best, when each can entertain 
a friendly and respectful regard, on account of 
accomplishments, toward the other, and feel 
that they have earnest and noble interests in 
common. The book-trade, as a business or 
calling, would rise in dignity, and in its rise 
would help to raise up literature itself. The 
rule always holds, I believe, that a race of 
high-minded publishers springs up contempo- 
raneously with great and popular writers. 

Secondly ; a greater productiveness in liter- 
ature here at home, and a greater unity in what 
is produced. The false appetite engendered 
and stimulated by the competition and shop- 
cries of the republishing press, once appeased, 
many English works of light and worthless 
character would grow stale on the ocean ; and 
being cast aside, American works, of a better 
class and spirit, would take their place ; the 
public mind would have leisure allowed it to 
discriminate, and the good works of domestic 
origin would be fairly measured with books of 
their own kind of English growth. The litera- I 
ture of the country, freed from the irregular | 



and occasional character it derives from the 
spasmodic effort it now costs author and pub- 
lisher to get each work before the world, would 
move forward, with a steady march and a uni- 
formity of production, in each department to 
which the national talent was directed. The 
periodical literature of the country, freed from 
the extraordinary predominance of foreign 
works, brought before it for notice, constantly 
jostling aside others of native growth, would 
rise to a higher criticism and method of judging 
works of art of all classes. The criticism of 
the country, dealing at present, in great part, 
with works from abroad, adopts a careless tone, 
borrows from foreign journals, and fails to en- 
ter upon the subject in the strict and careful 
spirit it would take if it grew up, side by side 
with the works it noticed. 

Art, too, at present a sad sufferer, with its 
kinsman, might be expected to awaken and 
open its eyes once more upon an atmosphere 
through which light and life began again to 
move. Apart from its share in the general de- 
cay, Art feels the evil influence of the incur- 
sions of foreign genius without the regulations 
of law. The incessant employment of native 
skill in copying and reproducing, without limit, 
the designs of foreign artists, would have a ten- 
dency to breed a race of imitators, and to inspire 
our efforts in this kind, with all the petty vices 
that belong to a school of imitators. A disre- 
spect for genius would be engendered ; a base 
and low style of design and execution fast- 
ened upon us ; and to all these would be added 
an unsparing spirit of plagiarism and foul play, 
as regarded works designed and constructed 
abroad. Restoring to the arts of design, as of 
kin to literature, their just rights, the foreign 
artist, as well as the foreign author, would en- 
ter the field on fair terms, and would know that 
he could protect his interests if he chose. 

In the presence of a new and living litera- 
ture, such as belongs to this soil, much of the 
criticism that now flies abroad and makes itself 
clamorous at noonday, would skulk into dark- 
ness, and,, creeping into convenient retreats, 
would screech and gibber unheard. The pres- 
ence of true standards, of manly examples of 
criticism, and such would arise in a well-regu- 
lated state of things, would awe into everlast- 
ing silence the brood of maggot-pies, and buz- 
zards, and carrion vultures, that now obstruct 
the light, and, spreading their obscene, clutter- 
ing wings before the eyes of the people, shut 
the clear heaven from the view, and make them 
believe that darkness is day, and little twilight- 
walkers, grown men, perchance. 

Thirdly; and this is the last I shall at pres- 
ent refer to — the growth of a purer and better 
tone of opinion at large. It can not be de- 
nied, I think, that what may be called a cer- 
tain heroic unity of thought and act, which 
marked this country at an earlier period, has 
been impaired. A certain steadfastness, with 
which the Republic once marched to its ob- 
jects, has been, somehow or other, invaded. I 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



369 



can not believe that the ancient spirit has en- 
tirely died out. 

The better mind of this country is, in many 
of its best aspects, unrepresented. Overshad- 
owed by a foreign literature, it lurks under- 
neath, and would, in the course of time, be al- 
together subdued. Nothing else can supply to 
a country the place of a literature in maturing 
and consolidating national opinion. At home 
a literature is a constant presence, uniting all 
parts and sections in a general bond. Abroad, 
the country rises or sinks, seems imposing or 
insignificant, in proportion to the front its lit- 
erature presents to the world. A certain va- 
cillation in the acts and sentiments of this 
country seems to me attributable, in some 
measure, to the want of counsel from mature 
minds, living aside from political life, and ca- 
pable of breathing over the broad surface of the 
land a spirit of profound knowledge and tran- 
quil truth. Any act by which a characteristic 
literature was aided in its birth, would help to 
steady opinion and to mature a consistent reli- 
ance on men and truths here at home. 

And now what is it withholds the instant 
passage of a law, in pursuance of justice, the 
sacredness of rights not to be gainsaid or ar- 
gued away, and our own better and nobler inter- 
ests as a nation of just men, given in some meas- 
ure to literature and the study of works of genius ? 
The future time, eager and fruitful, presses upon 
us. If we were assured that we are at this mo- 
ment enjoying the highest selfish advantage, 
from this system, there is no worthier time in 
which to level it to the ground, and vindicate 
ourselves by a great act of self-denial. Cheaply 
are its fruits spread before us, it is true ; what 
the value of that cheapness is, I have endeav- 
ored elsewhere to show. Cheap in its birth, 
cheap in its reproduction, cheap in its tenden- 
cies, cheap in its results, it is, in Heaven's 
truth, if rightly regarded. Of its better part, I 
venture to say, and in this view I think British 
authors will concur, that in the event of the 
passage of a law of International copyright, 
they will be prepared to place their writings 
before the American people at a price suited to 
the character and extent of our reading com- 
munity. This will be their interest, and this, 
I venture to predict their course. As for our- 
selves, we will find in this, as in all other cases, 
that a magnanimous performance of duty will 
bring with it its own just reward. 

The passage of an act of International copy- 
right will, it is asserted, tempt Britsh authors 
to write expressly for the American market ; 
and this is counted upon as one of the injurious 
results of a new law. Admit this conjecture 
to be true, and what ensues ? Admit that the 
temptation of a wide and democratic communi- 
ty of readers presents itself to the imagination 
of the British author, and that, fired by the 
prospect of great gain or the hope of a fame 
echoing from Oregon to the Atlantic, he enters 
upon the task of inditing books for the Ameri- 
Aa 



can public, can we not understand that his 
writings, to be acceptable to his transatlantic 
readers, must address themselves to their re- 
publican sympathies and hopes ; that he must 
treat of man according to this new experience 
of ours ; that he must speak of the American 
future as full of promise to the awakened in- 
terests of mankind. Will he, in the mean- 
time, being strong and powerful enough to 
speak through the darkness and tempest of an 
ocean, be unheard at home ? Being in some 
measure popular, will not the circumstance 
that he lifts his voice to a kindred people over 
the sea, call around him friends and adherents ? 
It will ; and America, his great friend and pa- 
tron (according to this conjecture) will find in 
him a republican champion on the very shore 
of Britain, armed to fight her battles, to hold a 
mailed parley for her right, and to cast before 
her breast the invincible shield of a loyal de- 
fence. A majestic hope certainly ; and one 
which the democratic believer, urged on by 
whatever zealous belief he may be, should not 
be in haste to obstruct. 

What ! a democratic thinker, one who looks 
before and after for pasture for the eye, falter- 
ing at the prospect of a long line of republican 
writers springing up in the very heart of Eng- 
land to vindicate his country and spread her 
principles through towers, and huts, and huge 
gabled factories, where he had despaired of 
having the heroic voice of a free speaker ever 
reach ! It can not be that he would hug to 
himself the treasure so lately dug from the 
wilderness ; that he would hoard and heap up 
on this side of the Atlantic the massy ingots so 
lately wrought out in bloody sweat and dinted 
fields, beyond the grasp of his Saxon kinsman ? 
" Perish," say we, " the base contracted sel- 
fishness of such a principle." 

It will be, indeed, a proud thing for us to 
render to the authors of a kindred people this 
sacred obligation. If to this we can join 
legislation on a broader and clearer ground 
than has been yet occupied, recognising all 
over the broad surface of the globe the inde- 
feasible and perpetual right of the author to 
his labors, the benignant sun will shine on no 
other people with a kindlier light. 

This great, this permanent honor, is within 
our reach. Oh, let it not, I beseech you, let it 
not pass away ! The step which bears you 
forward to make you its master, will be an 
angel's stride toward a higher and purer civili- 
zation than the world has yet known. 

I can not believe that the law-givers and 
teachers of mankind must speak to us always from 
amid the Stirling airs of a distressed condition ; 
cold and shaken with the damps of penury ; 
uttering only in the intervals of pain and hun- 
ger, the oracles by which the world ii to be 
guided and cheered onward, in its path of prog- 
ress. Vexed not always with puigl and the 
contortions of a suffering frame nm>t IhflN 
priests and poets of ours echo and answer the 



370 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



hopes and fears of their race. Something of 
free sunshine — a sight of the wide and glad 
horizon, undimmed by tears, a little of prosperity 
at their hearth-stones, and generous justice in 
the highways — must be granted them, ere their 
full hearts can speak forth the truths resident 
there. Not always bended, and broken, and 
sick at heart, shall these prodigal children of 



humanity be driven out to wander over the 
world, feeding where they can, dropping the 
seeds of immortal truth on the wayside and by 
chance : but raised up, inspired anew by a re- 
turn to the right of their race, the right to 
possess and enjoy their own, they shall come 
back to us a glorious company, radiant with 
hope, and strong in the power to do good ! 



THE END. 



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